FACT: The HadCRUT3 surface temperature index shows warming to 1878, cooling to 1911, warming to 1941, cooling to 1964, warming to 1998 and cooling through 2011. The warming rate from 1964 to 1998 was the same as the previous warming from 1911 to 1941. Satellites, weather balloons and ground stations all show cooling since 2001. The mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8 C over the 20th century is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas (“heat islands”), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas (“land use effects”). Two science teams have shown that correcting the surface temperature record for the effects of urban development would reduce the warming trend over land from 1980 by half.

There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.

MYTH 2: The “hockey stick” graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature decrease for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.

FACT: Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17th Century the “average global temperature” has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.

The “hockey stick”, a poster boy of both the UN’s IPCC and Canada’s Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.

MYTH 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO2 is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth’s oceans expel more CO2 as a result.

MYTH 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.

FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO2, CH4, Ozone and N2O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO2 constitutes about 0.039% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as “greenhouse agents” than water vapour and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and – in the end – are thought to be responsible for 75% of the “Greenhouse effect”. (See here) At current concentrations, a 3% change of water vapour in the atmosphere would have the same effect as a 100% change in CO2.

FACT: The computer models assume that CO2 is the primary climate driver, and that the Sun has an insignificant effect on climate. You cannot use the output of a model to verify or prove its initial assumption – that is circular reasoning and is illogical. Computer models can be made to roughly match the 20th century temperature rise by adjusting many input parameters and using strong positive feedbacks. They do not “prove” anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO2. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover.

MYTH 6: The UN proved that man–made CO2 causes global warming.

FACT: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1) “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2) “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”

To the present day there is still no scientific proof that man-made CO2 causes significant global warming.MYTH 7: CO2 is a pollutant.

FACT: This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is. CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has included CO2 with a number of truly toxic and noxious substances listed by the Environmental Protection Act, only as their means to politically control it.MYTH 8: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.

FACT: There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims on a global scale. Regional variations may occur. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting.

MYTH 9: Receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming.

FACT: Glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It’s normal. Besides, glacier’s health is dependent as much on precipitation as on temperature.

MYTH 10: The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.

FACT: The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica.

Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise.

More FACTS and MYTHS? See what Professor deFreitas has to say. Click here.

“MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.”
—
What isn’t a myth is the fact that the national debt of most countries is rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate. Are warmists concerned about the catastrophe of debt that is about to hit us and our posterity? Are they even willing to cut their expenses and CO2 output just a little bit by using video conferencing rather than flying off to conferences and award ceremonies around the world? Somebody wake me up when Al Gore and the rest of the warmists show any sign of taking climate change serious enough to actually modify their own behavior.

Very good, but I wish you added the classic line that assumes that all research showing we don’t have “Global Warming” is paid for by the oil companies. This seems to be the standard answer I get when I point to research showing the AGW idea wrong.

FACT: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1) “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2) “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”
———————————–
But wouldn’t this mean that deleting the two statements shows they they believe they had proved it, at least to themselves?

There are a fair number of myths in the rebuttal above as well. For example, when it speaks of “variation in solar output” it fails to note the magnitude of that variation: miniscule on the scale of the insolation itself. Solar intensity variation is not a plausible explanation for climate variation. The correlation (or lack thereof) between other aspects of solar state and the climate is possibly convincing, possibly not, but either way is remarkably difficult to tie in causally in a completely believable way.

The fact is that in many cases we do not know the answer to many questions in climate science. We do not know (for example) the “climate sensitivity”. We do not know how the decadal oscillations affect climate (or if) in the long run. We do not know precisely why ice ages happen when they happen, or end when they end. We cannot predict, even in hindsite, the proxy-derived thermal history from roughly 20,000 BCE through the present, let alone the 500,000 year history or the 50,000,000 year history. We do not know what the temperature outside would be if (for example) humans had become extinct 20,000, 10,000, 5000, 1000, 500, or 100 years ago (with no other change). We do not know what the temperature would be outside if we dropped CO_2 by 100 ppm tomorrow and kept it there for a decade. We do not know what the temperature outside would be if we bumped it by 100 ppm tomorrow and kept it that way for a decade. We do know what the temperature outside will be three weeks, three months, three year, or thirty years from now, not even on average, within a tenth of a degree (possibly not within a full degree).

I could continue our litany of ignorance. The real issue with this or any other statement of “myths” is that nobody wants to admit that we don’t know but has some sort of agenda, so that all assertions stated as fact to further an agenda are “myths”!

For example, the “mythbuster” snippets above state that there is “no evidence of any sea level rise” in a couple of places. Who cares? There is overwhelmingly sound evidence of global sea level rise. At the whopping rate of roughly 3 mm/year, on average, nearly constant over nearly 100 years. That is 30 cm a century, around a foot a century. This not “no” SLR, it is “unimportant” SLR — so far. Why not state it correctly, and back it up with the simple tide gauge/satellite data?

What I’d really like to see is not a site like this that makes naked statements without any concrete backing available on the site. It is too easy for uncritical “accepters” (the opposite of uncritical “deniers”) to ignore. I’d like to see naked comments or myths debunked, sure, but with two simple additions:

a) With feedback, so that when an indefensible statement about SLR is included, the authors fix it to precisely mirror the actual facts as best we know them, not cherrypicked facts or a view that is itself easily and correctly debunked. The facts where we know them are what they are, whether or not they support or do not support our “favorite” conclusions.

b) References? I mean seriously, this is the internet age. Here, look, I can do it myself:

I’m perfectly happy to ignore the egregious cherrypicking in this article, especially given the grafting on of satellite to gauge data at the end, but the fact of the matter is SLR from 1870 to the present is roughly 9 inches, not even ten inches per century, around 3 mm per year, sustained. I can’t even make myself see any significant sub-structure in this graph beyond a linear trend.

A contribution: myth is not a lie or a mistake, not a legend. Myth is a truth intuited that imposes itself on a non-rational basis and always contains a cosmogony and cosmology as an explanation for the incomprehensible, perceived spontaneously without the need of proof.

Very good, but I wish you added the classic line that assumes that all research showing we don’t have “Global Warming” is paid for by the oil companies. This seems to be the standard answer I get when I point to research showing the AGW idea wrong.
_____________________________________
The answer to that is NO, NO you have it backwards, the oil companies like BP and Shell are paying for the “Global Warming” research. They provided the funds for CRU and the World Bank provided Robert Watson (1996- present) as the head of the IPCC from 1997 to 2002 .

A contribution: myth is not a lie or a mistake, not a legend. Myth is a truth intuited that imposes itself on a non-rational basis and always contains a cosmogony and cosmology as an explanation for the incomprehensible, perceived spontaneously without the need of proof.

Absolutely correct, sir. I was speaking in the loosest of terms. I lie is deliberate, a mistake is unknown, and a legend (possibly) has a kernel of historical truth, although whether Hercules is mythical or legendary is difficult to say.

I have to agree with rgbatduke. Our level of ignorance regarding causes is phenomenal. Regarding climate science, we are at the place where astronomy was after Tycho Brahe made his observations of the heavens: we have tons of measurements, and are just beginning to try to make sense of them and form hypotheses. In my opinion, the CAGW-ists are the Ptolemaics, determined to keep CO2 at the center of their universe, while we Naturalists are not yet sure where the center should be, but pretty certain it’s not there.

What!? A glacier can’t be healthy or sick. It’s just that kind of zoomorphic idolization of some supposed perfect and static climate metric(s) of circa 1900 that’s helped to take us so far off the path reasonable conclusions based on rigorous logic and solid evidence.

Myth: CAGW/AGW are reasonable conclusions based on the available evidence.

Truth: CAGW/AGW are conclusions that have been jumped to without sufficient evidence by the application of several logical fallacies. The conclusions could still turn out to be right, even jumped to conclusions are sometimes right; only time will tell for sure.

In Myth 1 there is again a reference to various trends in temperature. Are there any references available where someone has done a statistical test, most particularly on the 2000 to current trend vs 1980 to 2000 to see if they are truly significantly different? I also wonder about whether the trends in the other time periods have been statistically tested, but the current trend is the one I most immediately wonder about.

phlogiston: I suggest you again look at the graphs you linked. I believe you were reporting on old values. Both indices at the BOM webpages you linked have warmed recently. The NOAA Reynolds OI.v2 data (base years 1971-2000) included in my mid-month update today shows NINO3.4 SST anomalies well above the 0.5 deg C threshold of El Nino conditions:http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/looks-like-the-enso-event-this-season-will-be-a-la-nada/
Even with the recent warming there, the title of the post is “Looks Like the ENSO Event This Season Will Be a La Nada”.

I’m all for letting all sides speak, but this drivel does more harm to our cause in part by serving to discredit actual skeptics who talk about actual science, and in part by the damage it does to newcomers who get suckered by this total bshyt. The very first sentence is an outright lie and the article descends from there into poorly written gibberish.

If links to this site are going to be allowed, at least the site should appear in the sidebar under “unreliable”. It has about as much to do with science as butterflies affect the orbit of asteroids in the next galaxy.

Why can’t the media provide such clear and reasonable material? Unlike the scientists and politicians they have no interest in one particular outcome so are free to say it as it is and let the others look after themselves. Then the voters, who mainly rely on the media, will be properly informed to choose politicians agreeing with their own view of things and not the worldwide fund for fraud. Presumably if the media follow a party line it must be in their own interests as if they choose a bias it is because they have been employed to. Like the BBC for instance. That is truly fraud and collusion, and in my view once reflected by governments, treason.

I believe that if people could remember how all this AGW nonsense came about maybe they would think about it in a different light. Mrs Thatcher was losing popularity at home. Prompted by Crispin Tickel newly appointed UK rep to UN and notable greenie, she made her mark in 1988 as the only scientist among world leaders by announcing impending doom from AGW. This also served to stifle enthusiasm for fossil fuelled power generation, to make way for her favourite nuclear power and to bury for ever the miner’s unions that had blighted the country since 1972 and had brought down Heath’s government. To support her position she robbed the research budgets to form the Hadley Centre to generate models for the IPCC to use in its alarmist campaigns intended to attract even more research money for model builders. AGW was a political, not a scientific construct. It only partly served her purposes and in her book Statecraft, she rubbished AGW – the ‘doomster’s favourite subject’ in a chapter headed ‘Hot Air and Global Warming’. Crispin Ticklel got his GCMG in 1988 for services to the UN (after being in post for only a year). Thatcher put wheels on a band wagon that ran away with every computer model builder aboard stuffed with research grants. Now a new generation has been brain washed into believing this nonsense to be real science. The fear of AGW is now embedded in the culture of the West and will exert its baleful influence against all reason. I believe that the real origins of this superstition should be more widely understood and that scepticism will flourish in its light.

This may be due to “homogenizing” temperatures to eliminate “outliers” which has the unanticipated effect of eliminating the best cooler temperatures. See: Watts et al. 2012 and the last session by Evans and Watts at WUWT-TV. As I understood the presentation, the best #1 and #2 grade temperature sites form only ~20% of the total. Therefore the homogenization routine thinks the BEST sites are the OUTLIERS and replaces those best quality data with the average of much poorer #3, #4, and #5 with UHI driven higher temperatures.

I’m all for letting all sides speak, but this drivel does more harm to our cause in part by serving to discredit actual skeptics who talk about actual science, and in part by the damage it does to newcomers who get suckered by this total bshyt. The very first sentence is an outright lie and the article descends from there into poorly written gibberish. [ . . . ]

– – – – – –

davidmhoffer,

I agree with with most of your very numerous comments over the years, but I cannot agree with your reference to ‘our cause’. I do not have a cause wrt science, merely an extraordinary love of the fact that us human beings have the capability to know reality through stringent scientific discipline.

1.In all cases, the observed trend since January 2000 exhibits slower warming than the mean trend. This is sufficient to state that the observations have not been warming faster that expected based on the models.

Examining this graph we could conclude that if 2001 is the “right” year to start an analysis (or better yet if the choice of 2001 was some how random), and if the ‘weather noise’ can be modeled as red, the data since 2001 are consistent with 2 σ uncertainty for the trend of -0.170 C/dec to +0.031 c/decade with a best estimate of -0.069 Based on this one would not rule out a positive real trend. . . .That is: Accounting for earth weather, a trend of 0.2C/decade is inconsistent with this observation of the earth’s trend and the earth’s weather variability.

Davidmhoffer (and others) If you wish to discuss the physics in the article statement by statement then I’m more than willing to have a public debate with you or anyone right here – if Anthony allows it.

Most thinking readers would also ignore the type of unsubstantiated comments you make, which are rather typical of the type of assertive statements often made when people just lap up the IPCC propaganda without having a “feeling” for the physics of the situation.

You are backing the message of this propaganda against the research carried out by myself and other members of the 120-strong PSI organization, such membership including many well qualified and experienced scientists from a wide range of disciplines. All members have one thing in common – they know that what the IPCC promulgates about carbon dioxide having any effect whatsoever on climate is nothing but incorrect pseudo science – the biggest hoax the world has ever seen. Neither you nor Anthony will stop Principia Scientific International informing the public and the politicians of the facts.

Science and Math may change my views
but words will never sway me..

[Reply: WUWT is not like RealClimate, SkepticalScience, or any of the other heavily censoring climate alarmist blogs. So long as you stick to science, your comments will not be censored. — mod.]

UPDATE 11/21/12: Let me amend that. This is Doug Cotton writing under yet another fake name. He’s been banned for threadbombing the “principia” garbage science he keeps pushing, even though I’ve made it clear (and so have other bloggers) that his interpretations of science are unwelcome.

So, now that I’ve found out who he is, delete at will, because he’s not sticking to science, he’s pushing a falsehood cloaking in sciency terms. – Anthony

Consider backradiation from a cooler region of the atmosphere striking a warmer region of a body of water. The radiation carries electro-magnetic energy, which is not the same as thermal energy.

Q.1: Does the radiation penetrate the water a little so that its electro-magnetic energy gets converted to thermal energy which then warms the water so that, some time later, additional evaporation, conduction and radiation will transfer the original energy back to the atmosphere and space? YES / NO

Q.2 If you answered NO to Q.1 then do you accept my description of what happens in the above article? Or, if your answer to Q.1 was YES, then why would the first process (radiation warming the water) not be a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

If you assume Q.1 to be correct, then the answer to the second question is not that the 2LoT is not violated because there is no net energy transfer between the surface and the atmosphere – after all, only the same amount of energy comes back out of the (water) surface (at a later time) as a direct result of the first process, and some of that is radiated direct to space (not the atmosphere) and some exits the surface by non-radiative processes, so there’s more net radiation into the surface – if Q.1 is correct, that is.

REPLY: Ignore him. This denial of the greenhouse effect is just more CRAP from Doug Cotton under another one of his FAKE NAMES to get around the fact that he’s been banned from WUWT for thread bombing with Principia junk. He and the whole crowd of slayers can take a flying leap. Doug, let me be clear. You are creating fake email addresses. One more incident and I launch a complaint against your ISP. Now, for the last time GET OUT – Anthony

Can we also dismiss that “CO2 level follows the temperature” nonsense? One just have to give a quick glance at the temperature record (noise) and compare it with Mauna Loa graph of CO2 increase (smooth, exponential, modulo seasonal variations).

Science_Author;
which are rather typical of the type of assertive statements often made when people just lap up the IPCC propaganda
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
REPLY: I don’t think anyone who is remotely familiar with me would accuse me of “lapping up” the IPCC propaganda.

Science_Author;
You are backing the message of this propaganda
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
REPLY: There are few people more vocal in their criticism of the IPCC’s science than me. Their science being questionable, or even outright wrong, doesn’t make yours right and the implication that I must choose one or the other is as ridiculous as asserting that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist.

Science_Author;
the research carried out by myself and other members of the 120-strong PSI organization
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
REPLY: the number of researchers you have is immaterial. If numbers mattered, the debate would have been over ages ago, and the warmists would have won hands down.

Science_Author
they know that what the IPCC promulgates about carbon dioxide having any effect whatsoever on climate is nothing but incorrect pseudo science
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Them being wrong doesn’t make you right. What they do or do not know doesn’t make you right. You’re principle tenet is that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. This is just silly. The earth is warmer than the moon despite both bodes getting nearly the exact same insolation. One has an atmosphere, one doesn’t, the one with the atmosphere is warmer. Mercury has no atmosphere, and yet peak temperatures on Mercury barely rival the AVERAGE temperatures on Venus which gets much less insolation…but has an atmosphere. Unless you have an alternative explanation for these FACTS, the greenhouse effect obviously DOES exist.

If you want to argue that a change in CO2 levels from what we have now has an unknown result, I’d agree with you. If you want to argue that the magnitude and the sign of the sum of all direct and feedback effects is not well understood or known to any precision, I’ll agree with that. If you want to argue that the IPCC has grossly exaggerated both the expected effects of increases in CO2 and their actual knowledge of the science, I’ll agree with that.

But argue that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist and you’re just wasting my time and misleading others.

re Myth 3 : I think the explanation given is misleading and incorrect. I think also that the issue is muddled since it mixes two ideas – CO2 concentration, and warming.

May I suggest this instead:

Fact [not Myth] x: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, thus increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Over the last 50 years or so, human actions have almost certainly increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Just how much of the observed increase is man-made is uncertain because there are natural factors operating too. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth’s oceans expel more CO2 when temperatures increase, and absorb more CO2 when temperatures decrease. It is likely, however, that human actions are the major factor.

Fact y: CO2 in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas which warms the planet.

CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” which does have a warming effect. However, as the CO2 concentration increases, it takes more and more additional CO2 to produce the same increment in temperature. “Greenhouse gas” is a misnomer because the process is completely different to that in a greenhouse.

The IPCC report claims that a doubling of CO2 concentration will eventually increase global temperature by about 3 degrees Celcius, but there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim. There is a significant body of evidence which indicates that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration will eventually increase global temperature by about 1 degree Celcius. This is generally accepted, but it is still possible that the CO2 “greenhouse” effect is now saturated, ie. that adding further CO2 will not increase temperature any further.

And perhaps the following could be added:

Myth z: Man-made CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a century or more.

There is a significant body of evidence that the half-life of excess CO2 in the atmosphere is 3-4 years. In other words, whenever the natural balance with the oceans at the current temperature is disturbed by extra CO2 being placed into the atmosphere, then half of the “excess” CO2 is absorbed within 3-4 years. It makes no difference whether the CO2 has a natural source or is man-made.

Consistent with the evidence, the oceans have so far absorbed about half of all man-made CO2. This proportion may change in future. For example if, as many climate scientists now think, we have just entered a multi-decade cooling phase, then the rate of CO2 absorption by the oceans is likely to increase.

re Myth 2 : You could mention that the HS uses a lot of tree-ring data which is completely unreliable as a temperature proxy because trees react just as strongly to other factors, particularly rainfall. You could also mention that data was removed from the graph where it diverged from the other data, thus rendering the entire study useless.

Explanation here.
—————————————————
Pure ownage.
The fact refractive gases block what comes in before it goes out – cooling the planet – means, the more you put into the air, the more of it’s relevant spectra refract about and are deflected, before they can ever become heat.

This isn’t some grammar nazi fetish, it’s based in principles of law. Juries have to hear information related to them in commonly correct terms so that what they are hearing is as plain a version of reality as people from several science backgrounds might need; and, in settling matters legal, utmost plainness is demanded so that jurors from different backgrounds – all educated in cross-referenced educational realms – might understand things correctly.

These people claim that in spite of the many facts that do indeed mean, these gases cool, we have to use the term heating ‘so people can understand.’

Bullshooting this way is lying on the way to criminal fraud and has been since Al Gore said he approved of the idea there’s a Magic Gas in the atmosphere that might be collecting unusual amounts of infrared light in our atmosphere at night, but that since there’s no way to check on that, we’d better go ahead and institute Al Gore’s policies in spite of whatever elections occur.

First, let me state that I don’t buy the AGW stuff. I don’t think that mankind is catastrophically warming the planet. I believe that the planet is getting warmer. (and it seems that a great many of you agree.)

So, on Myth #1… Are we really cooling? Has it really been cooling since 1998? Having looked at quite a bit of data, it seems to me that we are hanging steady, especially when you account for 2012, which has been a very warm year.

I agree with most of the other, “facts,” but I don’t think that it’s very intellectually honest to say that we are, “cooling,” when the drop in temperature is barely measurable, and 2 of the last 4 years are among the top 3 in hottest years in the past century. The kind of statement allows dissenting views to say, “look, their first “fact,” is a joke. We all knows that the alarmists have done plenty of cherry picking and stat distortions of their own. Let’s not play their game.

Firstly, to Davidmhoffer: I have read many of your posts over the last year or two at least. In that you agree with the IPCC that there is a radiative GHE (and you propagate such a claim) you will know that I disagree, because I believe I can show, with valid physics, why such cannot exist.

For example, you cite Venus as an example of such a radiative GHE. It is not. Its atmosphere of CO2 is so massive that hardly any Solar radiation gets through to the surface, and nor does much backradiation. Read what one PSI researcher had to say about Venus in the three pages in Section 8 of this paper.

The atmosphere of any planet will have a temperature gradient based on the adiabatic lapse rate. This is as it says, adiabatic, and thus does not require the addition of energy. It is a function of the mass of the atmosphere and the force of gravity – thus a function of pressure. If Earth’s atmosphere were only nitrogen and oxygen in the same proportions the lapse rate would be almost identical with what it is now, so a very similar temperature gradient would exist, and the surface temperature would be almost identical to what it is, any variation being mainly due to the different mass of water vapor molecules, not the backradiation coming from such.

To all: Please respond to the two questions in my post above at 6:09pm.

REPLY: Ignore him. This denial of the greenhouse effect is just more CRAP from Doug Cotton under another one of his FAKE NAMES to get around the fact that he’s been banned from WUWT for thread bombing with Principia junk. He and the whole crowd of slayers can take a flying leap. Doug, let me be clear. You are creating fake email addresses. One more incident and I launch a complaint against your ISP. Now, for the last time GET OUT – Anthony

There is obviously a contradiction between different data sets here. phlogiston is looking at the ENSO Meter on this WUWT website. I noticed this as well, namely on November 6, the reading was 0.42, but the graph showed 0.50. Then on November 13, the reading dropped to 0.12, but the graph stayed at 0.50. An hour ago, the latest reading went up to 0.39, but the graph shows 0.7 now. WUWT? Was someone not wanting to discourage Gore or one of his followers before the big day? Was this an innocent mistake or is this graphgate?

The Myths and Facts page is just one of 608 pages and articles on the Friends of Science website. It is just an introduction to the key points about climate change. For further information on climate science, use the left navigation menu item “Climate Science” which has 15 sections. This makes it easy to find the best articles on the topics that interests you. Example, “The Sun” section has 25 articles, the “Temperature History” section has 28 articles.http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=194
Our most recent articles are;http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=393

Friends of Science hosts luncheons featuring presentations from the world’s top climate scientists (last month, Journalist Donna Laframbroise), issues press releases on current topics of interests, gives presentations to groups, submissions to governments and other outreach activities. We send climate science news and general interest climate news several times per month, and quarterly newsletters to our members.http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=605

Robert Olsen says:
November 20, 2012 at 7:07 pmespecially when you account for 2012, which has been a very warm year

I do not know what you consider warm, but 2012 has been one of the cooler years of the past decade as shown below.2012 in Perspective so far on Six Data Sets

Note the bolded numbers for each data set where the lower bolded number is the highest anomaly recorded so far in 2012 and the higher one is the all time record so far. There is no comparison.

With the UAH anomaly for October at 0.33, the average for the first ten months of the year is (-0.13 -0.13 + 0.05 + 0.23 + 0.18 + 0.24 + 0.13 + 0.20 + 0.34 + 0.33)/10 = 0.14. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.42. The highest ever monthly anomaly of 0.66 was reached in April of 1998.

With the GISS anomaly for October at 0.69, the average for the first ten months of the year is (0.32 + 0.37 + 0.45 + 0.55 + 0.67 + 0.56 + 0.46 + 0.58 + 0.61 + 0.69)/10 = 0.53. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 2010 was the warmest at 0.63. The highest ever monthly anomaly of 0.89 was reached in March of 2002 and in January of 2007.

With the Hadcrut3 anomaly for September at 0.520, the average for the first nine months of the year is (0.217 + 0.194 + 0.305 + 0.481 + 0.475 + 0.477 + 0.446 + 0.512+ 0.520 )/9 = 0.403. This would rank 10th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.548. The highest ever monthly anomaly of 0.756 was reached in February of 1998. One has to back to the 1940s to find the previous time that a Hadcrut3 record was not beaten in 10 years or less.

With the sea surface anomaly for October at 0.428, the average for the first ten months of the year is (0.203 + 0.230 + 0.241 + 0.292 + 0.339 + 0.351 + 0.385 + 0.440 + 0.449 + 0.428)/10 = 0.336. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.451. The highest ever monthly anomaly of 0.555 was reached in August of 1998.

With the RSS anomaly for October at 0.294, the average for the first ten months of the year is (-0.059 -0.122 + 0.072 + 0.331 + 0.232 + 0.338 + 0.291 + 0.255 + 0.383 + 0.294)/10 = 0.202. This would rank 11th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.55. The highest ever monthly anomaly of 0.857 was reached in April of 1998.

With the Hadcrut4 anomaly for September at 0.524, the average for the first nine months of the year is (0.288 + 0.209 + 0.339 + 0.514 + 0.516 + 0.501 + 0.469 + 0.529 + 0.524)/9 = 0.432. This would rank virtually tied for 10th if it stayed this way. 2010 was the warmest at 0.54. The highest ever monthly anomaly of 0.818 was reached in January of 2007. The 2011 anomaly at 0.399 puts 2011 in 12th place and the 2008 anomaly of 0.383 puts 2008 in 14th place.

On all six of the above data sets, a record is out of reach.

2 of the last 4 years are among the top 3 in hottest years

Please tell me which data set this applies to. (It is not one of the above 6.) Thank you!

Science_Author;
For example, you cite Venus as an example of such a radiative GHE. It is not. Its atmosphere of CO2 is so massive that hardly any Solar radiation gets through to the surface
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And yet it is hot. Hotter than Mercury. How’s that work? Oh, I see… you say:

Science_Author;
The atmosphere of any planet will have a temperature gradient based on the adiabatic lapse rate. This is as it says, adiabatic, and thus does not require the addition of energy.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Well congratulations, you’ve invented perpetual motion. You’ve also explained why the night side of a planet is the exact same temperature as the day side. When the sun goes down, and it cools off at night, just remember that this is your imagination at work because it couldn’t possibly be cooler due to the lack of energy input from the sun.

1. The Moon and the planets demonstrate clearly that their temperatures can be fully explained without resorting to assuming there is a GHE due to backradiation from their atmosphere, if they have one. I have linked above a paper in which Section 8 discusses how and why the atmosphere on Venus is so hot, even during the 117-Earth-day “night” on the dark side of Venus. The radiation from the surface of Venus is a mere 2.1 to 4.1W/m^2 which is about 2.5% of the incident Solar radiative flux. Its atmosphere absorbs and reflects about 97.5% of that radiation. Yes, CO2 can absorb some incident Solar radiation in the 2 micron band for example, and that is probably the mechanism by which the Venus atmosphere acquired its temperature over billions of years.

2. All atmospheres exhibit a temperature gradient which is only a function of the adiabatic lapse rate – that rate depending upon the mass of the atmosphere and the force of gravity. Venus is far hotter than Earth because its atmosphere is about 94 times that of Earth. It is also closer to the Sun.

3. The radiation emitted by any planet adjusts spontaneously to match closely the incident radiation. But the temperature that can indeed be calculated using S-B Law must be calculated by integrating the various levels of radiation over the whole spherical surface because of the proportionality with T^4. (The fourth power of the mean of a set of values is very different from the mean of the fourth powers of those numbers.)

4. The temperature thus calculated for a planet with an atmosphere may be thought of as a weighted mean of all temperatures found both on the surface and throughout the atmosphere. (The atmosphere may have a lower emissivity than the surface, so this also has to be taken into account.)

5. There will always be an adiabatic lapse rate in any atmosphere, and this is the cause of the temperature gradient (in the troposphere) which ensures that the surface will always be much hotter than the top of the troposphere. So, the mean radiating temperature will be found somewhere in the atmosphere and the surface temperature will always be much warmer than this radiating temperature, purely because of the temperature gradient based on the lapse rate.

6. Thus no GHE concept or slowing of surface cooling rates is required to explain what is observed.

7. It is true that radiation from a cooler source will slow the rate of cooling by radiation of a warmer target. But most of the energy transferring from the surface to the atmosphere (night or day) does so by non-radiative processes. (You may disagree with the word “most” but I believe I have substantiated this in the article and my linked paper published March 2012.) These non-radiative processes – such as evaporative cooling and conduction (or “diffusion) leading to convection – all these processes spontaneously adjust in order to compensate for any slowing of the radiative effect. (Reasons are in the article.) Thus the overall rate of surface cooling is not affected by backradiation and there is no radiative GHE.

Please keep any discussion relevant to the above numbered points, or in response to the two questions in my earlier comment above. I will discuss the physics, but not assertive statements or verbal waffle about consensus opinions or the like.

Friends of Science said in part:
“As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels
move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the
RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming.”

CO2 level has been the result of warming when it was a feedback rather
than a cause. That was when the sum of CO2 in the atmosphere, hydrosphere
and biosphere was constant.

It appears to me that the debate should be on how much or how little
warming the almost certainly anthropogenic CO2 increase is causing,
and how sensitive (or insensitive) the climate is to change of CO2, and
variation of sensitivity as CO2 level increases.
I suspect climate sensitivity to change of CO2 level will decrease as CO2
increases, because that will increase the lapse rate negative feedback.

“You’ve also explained why the night side of a planet is the exact same temperature as the day side.”

umm, IIRC, on Venus, it is. The atmosphere governs the surface temperature.

Earth’s atmosphere is not thick enough to do this. so we are sort of half way between a massive Venusian atmosphere with small night/day changes, and Mars with very little atmosphere and large diurnal swings. The Earth’s atmosphere acts as a regulator and distributor of heat, based on pressure differences, but is nowhere near as effective as the Venusian atmosphere.

David There is no creation of energy involved.* There is, instead, merely a conversion of kinetic energy to potential energy. I know it may be hard to comprehend by people without a lengthy background in this area of physics. But, even in a lab, a column of air in a tall sealed container will exhibit a small temperature difference between top and bottom, even without apparent air movement.** It’s all to do with pressure differences, and the calculations based on gravity agree with empirical results. So, sorry, you can’t dispute the proven physics. There is no way that any atmosphere not containing radiating gases is going to have an equal temperature from top to bottom, even if there is no addition of energy, such as in a hypothetical atmosphere of totally non-radiating gases.

* adiabatic means occurring without gain or loss of energy. When a gas is compressed under adiabatic conditions, its pressure increases and its temperature rises without the gain or loss of any energy. Conversely, when a gas expands under adiabatic conditions, its pressure and temperature both decrease without the gain or loss of energy.

** I have read other experiments confirming this, but here is one I just found in a few seconds on Google.

REPLY: Ignore him. This denial of the greenhouse effect is just more CRAP from Doug Cotton under another one of his FAKE NAMES to get around the fact that he’s been banned from WUWT for thread bombing with Principia junk. He and the whole crowd of slayers can take a flying leap. Doug, let me be clear. You are creating fake email addresses. One more incident and I launch a complaint against your ISP. Now, for the last time GET OUT – Anthony

Meanwhile, Dr. Roy Spencer (on the skeptical side of the climate change
debate) goes along with a 2x change of CO2 causing a 3.7 W/m^2 forcing.

And, water vapor responding to temperature change caused by that is a
positive feedback.
However, I suspect the amount of positive feedback here considered by
IPCC is on the high side, by being close to values predicted by a simple
model assuming unchanged relative humidity. While, positivity of the cloud
albedo feedback (where I also think IPCC considers overestimated values
greater than the surface albedo feedback) reduces overall atmospheric
relative humidity when increase of greenhouse gases causes warming.

rgbatduke said in part on November 20, 2012 at 2:49 pm:
“There are a fair number of myths in the rebuttal above as well. For example,
when it speaks of “variation in solar output” it fails to note the magnitude of
that variation: miniscule on the scale of the insolation itself. Solar intensity
variation is not a plausible explanation for climate variation. The correlation
(or lack thereof) between other aspects of solar state and the climate is
possibly convincing, possibly not, but either way is remarkably difficult to tie
in causally in a completely believable way.”

Climate sensitivity to a solar variation forcing is greater than climate
sensitivity to a greenhouse gas forcing. An increase of greenhouse gas
level increases the lapse rate, and a decreaseof greenhouse gas level
decreases the lapse rate. Therefore, the magnitude of the lapse rate
feedback (which is a significant negative one) is greater for a greenhouse
gas forcing than a solar variation forcing.

Also, solar variation is suspected of causing cloud formation shifts due to
changes of cosmic ray bombardment, especially when lower levels of solar
activity are occurring. This is suspected as a local positive feedback
mechanism in northwestern Europe and northeastern USA, reinforced by the
surface albedo positive feedback. Have you heard of “Hale winters”?

Mike: Please read the last paragraph in that comment. (This could happen on a warm sunny morning when net energy is into the surface.) Then read the first 5 sections of this paper in which this very issue of “net” transfers is discussed in detail. The first process is a complete and independent process, well and truly finished before any of the other processes start. The subsequent processes have no memory of how the water was warmed. If my roof guttering has three downpipes, water will not flow up one pipe just because more water flows down the other two.

REPLY: Ignore him. This denial of the greenhouse effect is just more CRAP from Doug Cotton under another one of his FAKE NAMES to get around the fact that he’s been banned from WUWT for thread bombing with Principia junk. He and the whole crowd of slayers can take a flying leap. Doug, let me be clear. You are creating fake email addresses. One more incident and I launch a complaint against your ISP. Now, for the last time GET OUT – Anthony

Science_Author;
Please keep any discussion relevant to the above numbered points, or in response to the two questions in my earlier comment above.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I see. Now science is limited to the points you wish to discuss. Anything outside of the points you have raised is not permitted. You want to define the physics and then argue from within your definition. Unfortunately, your definition lives inside your head and physics doesn’t pay much attention to it.

BTW your point 3 above about averaging 4th power directly contradicts your assertion of temperature being related only to atmospheric mass. If you are going to invent definitions to argue from, at least be consistent. You may also want to do the math on that. What you will discover is that by applying the average of the 4th power, the greenhouse effect is even BIGGER than what gets calculated by doing a straight average.

There’s very little point in answering your two questions because as constructed the questions are imprecise and actually have no answer. You’ve asked “how long is a piece of string?” and demanded a yes/no answer.

Chris4692 said, on November 20, 2012 at 4:07 pm:
“In Myth 1 there is again a reference to various trends in temperature. Are
there any references available where someone has done a statistical test,
most particularly on the 2000 to current trend vs 1980 to 2000 to see if they
are truly significantly different?”

There is a strong periodic component there. The warmest individual year so
far is 1998. After their smoothing algorhythm, it was warmest at 2004-2005
and since slightly cooled.
Both the UAH and RSS satellite indices of lower troposphere temperature
have their warmest individual year being 1998, and smoothing by anywhere
from 5 to 15 years peaks around 2004-2005.
And, the GISS index, as shown by Wikipedia:
shows most of the periodicity that HadCRUT3 shows, and smoothed version
not warming after a 2005 peak, athough they say the warmest year so far
was 2011, with 2nd place being 2005 and 3rd place was 1998.

The periodic factor could be the Atlantic Multidecal Oscillation, which could
be related to a possibly similar-period Pacific item (affecting ratio of El Ninos
to La Ninas) and/or a known, somewhat-irregular solar cycle that has varying
amplitude and period varying from 40’s of years to 60’s of years.

I wouldn’t put it quite like that. The atmosphere being very thick, temperature variation at surface is minimized by the atmosphere moving energy from hot places to cold places and tending to even things out. Plus, the thicker the atmosphere, the less sunlight penetrates to the surface to directly raise temperatures. But, if you think of the planet as a system, the day side would absolutely be considerably warmer than the night side, because the atmosphere is directly heated by the sun. The temperature variation is still there, just where it is most pronounced changes. But it most certainly does change and without any sun at all, Venus would absolutely cool, and saying that no energy input is required to maintain itz temperature is ludicrous.

Forget the planets and the atmosphere, let’s explain this with a cold room and a sweater.

I’m in a cold room. I’m cold. There is a sweater in the room. It is at room temperature, so it is cold too. I put the sweater on. Pretty soon I am warm. Why? Where did the heat come from? The sweater was the same temperature as the room, cold. How could it make me warm?

Now let’s follow the logic of those who insist that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. Suppose we measured the temperature of the sweater before I put it on, and after. The after temperature of the sweater is higher. Now let’s convert, using Stefan-Boltzmann Law, the temperature before and after to w/m2. What we see is that the sweater is radiating more watts/m2 after I put it on than before.

Now, if we were to consider this fact in isolation, we would conclude that the sweater is making us colder. It is in fact, radiating more watts/m2 after we put it on than before. It must, obviously, be having a cooling effect. This is the logic of the people who are convinced that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist.

But in fact, by only looking at the w/m2 that the sweater is radiating, we’ve fooled ourselves. We’ve only looked at a piece of the system, and drawn (incorrect) conclusions about the system as a whole. Unless you’ve never been in a cold room and put on a sweater to warm up, you know from experience that the sweater doesn’t increase your cooling, it warms you up.

Your body heat warms the sweater. The sweater, now warmer than room temperature, radiates heat according to SB Law, but it does it in two directions. Outward, toward the room, and inward, toward your body. So yes, it is radiating more w/m2 than it was before, because it is warmer than before you put it on, but some of the w/m2 are sent back where they came from (you) instead of just escaping.

If someone wants to argue that putting the sweater on cools you instead of warming you, by all means, have at it.

Another way of looking at it is that the atmospheric pressure gradient allows a particular altutude in the atmosphere to hold a maximum amount of heat, if it is available. On Earth, the Sun’s energy reaches the surface, so in many cases, the pressure gradient cannot hold the heat, so the energy migrates upward, in a cooling action we call convection. In cases like at the poles, there is not enough energy heating the surface, so there is less energy than the potential of the atmosphere, hence very little convection.
Of course, adding H2O really makes things much more chaotic. 3 possible phases within the atmosphere. ! But the “models” don’t do H2O very well, do they. ;-)

What I am trying to say is that on Venus, the enregy is more “trapped” at lower altitudes and therefore tends to move sideways (so to speak) rather than as convection.. The pressure gradient and the absorption of energy in the atmosphere forces the lower altitudes to distribute the energy more evenly at the surface, day or night, rather than moving that heat upwards like in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Earth is sort of somewhere between Mars, with near zero atmosphere, and therefore no energy balancing at the surface, and Venus.

Yes, of course the Sun energy is important, but it is the pressure gradient that allows that energy to be retained and regulated.

From FoS text “The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years”

They are actually understating the problem here because 4% per year is an EXPONENTIAL INCREASE. It is very misleading to think of it as constant.

The fact that an exponential increase in CO2 has continued along side 16 years of essentially level temperature records ought to put an end to that failed hypothesis once and for all.

There is no reason why I should not be able to ask those two questions about the backradiation striking warmer water. They are very relevant questions which nobody has been able to answer satisfactorily here yet.

My numbered points set out a cogent argument based on valid physics, none of which you have been able to refute with physics by a long shot. For example, you say BTW your point 3 above about averaging 4th power directly contradicts your assertion of temperature being related only to atmospheric mass. No it doesn’t. The temperature (for a given amount of Solar radiation on any given planet) at any particular altitude does depend on the pressure at that altitude, which in turn is related to the atmospheric mass. Yes, for the Earth the calculated radiating temperature using calculus is in fact well below 255 K – some calculations show around 200 K – if one assumes typical surface emissivity. But, as I said, most of the radiation comes from the atmosphere which has lower emissivity, so the mean weighted temperature would be higher than 200 K.
.
Then you say when referring to Venus “the day side would absolutely be considerably warmer than the night side” – well it might be if there were really a radiative GHE, but there isn’t and the night side of Venus remains at a similar temperature to the day side during the 117-Earth-day-long Venus night.

You need to read more widely, David, starting with the three pages about Venus in Section 8 of this paper, to which I have already referred in an earlier comment. Furthermore, the concept of a radiative GHE is based on backradiation, and there is very little backradiation on Venus.

Being so totally incorrect about empirical facts such as the temperature on the night side of Venus, I suspect all those silent readers will not have much confidence in your guesswork.

Science_Author – by “Mike” I assume you meant me. The document you gave a link to says “It may be deduced that none of the radiation from a cooler body (and only a portion of the radiation from a warmer body) has any thermodynamic effect on the other body. All such radiation from a cooler source is rejected in some way, and it can be deduced that resonance and scattering occurs without any conversion to thermal energy. The radiation continues in another direction until it strikes a cooler target, which could be in space.“.

Hmmm. When radiation leaves a body, it does not know what lies ahead of it, so it cannot choose to avoid a hotter object in its path. By the time it reaches the hotter object, it cannot remember what temperature it had when it started, so it doesn’t know whether it is supposed to convert to thermal energy or to run away. Equally, the hotter object wasn’t watching when the radiation set off on its journey, so it doesn’t know whether to accept or reject it. The point of the 2nd law is that the amount of heat delivered by radiation from the hotter body to the cooler body cannot be less than that going the other way.

Wow, this must have been posted just as I retired to the land of Nod. I have read through some of the comments and found the usual nitpicks and complaints. FWIW, I think there has to be soundbites of information, though I agree with rgb in that they at least should be scientifically and factually correct. So his example re the SLr is perfectly valid criticism.

However, if we just stop and consider the objective of the exercise, which is to impart general facts (and presumably to a non scientific audience previously bombarded with Gores snippets?) in a manner which can easily be grasped – I don’t think the effort is too bad! The bullet points are esentially there, are they not?

As a scientist, I don’t like the cherry picking and brief explanations – but the general public probably do! – how many Joe Averages have actually sat down and worked through the AGW meme? The important thing is that in the world of ‘awareness issues’ – Joe Average is the one that the alarmists are targetting – and the skeptic side really does need to do the same – even if it does seem difficult at times!

Mike J..
Every transfer rate of energy between 2 objects is related to the “difference” of energy between those 2 objects. Everything strives for equilibrium.

If the air around a warm object (A) is cool, the energy flows from the object (A) to the air.
If the air is not quite as cool, the energy transfer rate is less, hence the object (A) retains more energy.

I think this is what the climate bletheren mean, maybe, They really don’t explain themselves well, probably because they just don’t “get it “. They seem to think that this means that energy is transfering from the cold air to the warm object.

David You feel cold without the sweater because your body (which generates energy from your food) transfers heat to the surrounding air by conduction (molecular collision processes) and (mostly) to the walls of the room by radiation. The sweater slows the rate of heat transfer from your body but, being a little colder than your body, it does not transfer any heat back to your body. The oxygen and nitrogen making up nearly all the atmosphere do likewise when they slow the rate of heat lost by the surface by way of conduction. The adiabatic lapse rate ensures that the air adjoining the surface remains at a temperature close to that of the surface. That is why the Earth’s surface has not cooled more these last 4 billion years, and doesn’t get as cold at night (or as hot by day) as the Moon. That is also why the night side of the surface of Venus stays nearly as warm as the day side – which I hope you’ve now read about in Section 8 of the paper I referred you to. Speaking as one with over 50 years’ experience studying physics, it appears to me that you have a lot to learn about the physics of heat transfer.

REPLY: Ignore him. This denial of the greenhouse effect is just more CRAP from Doug Cotton under another one of his FAKE NAMES to get around the fact that he’s been banned from WUWT for thread bombing with Principia junk. He and the whole crowd of slayers can take a flying leap. Doug, let me be clear. You are creating fake email addresses. One more incident and I launch a complaint against your ISP. Now, for the last time GET OUT – Anthony

“If someone wants to argue that putting the sweater on cools you instead of warming you, by all means, have at it.”

No, its stops your body from loosing heat as quickly, This is a totally different concept.

The jumper would NOT warm up a slab of frozen meat !!

If the sweater is initially at the same temperature as the room, then initially it makes no difference if you put it on or not. It is only as you transfer your energy to the sweater that is becomes able to SLOW DOWN the rate of energy loss, allowing your internal heat generation to operate more effectively.

Now wear that same jumpering in a sauna, where there is too much heat, your body would not last long, because the jumper SLOWS DOWN the energy loss.

The atmosphere DOES NOT operate this way.. It does ‘not much’ when the surface is cold, and it COOLS the surface when it gets too warm because it ENABLES energy transfer. !!

Mike:Jonas I know it’s all new stuff and I accept that you do not yet understand the process explained in the paper Computational Blackbody Radiation cited in the paper from which you quoted. But you have also ignored the rest of the argument therein which leads to the conclusion stated. You make assumptions that are countered in these papers which you obviously have not studied. It’s not that hard to understand if you take the time to read and think about it.

You (and others) need to rid yourself of the mistaken concept that radiation always transfers heat into every target it strikes, for that is not what empirical evidence demonstrates.

Briefly, to get you started, when radiation travels each way between a warm and cool body, that portion of the radiation which corresponds to the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body is also radiation which the warmer body can itself radiate. These frequencies, with corresponding intensities, merely resonate, and the effect is that the radiation is immediately re-emitted without any of its electro-magnetic energy ever being converted to thermal energy in the target. That is, it does not transfer heat. However, the warmer body radiates more intensely and in more frequencies, and its Planck curve is thus higher and broader, fully enveloping the Planck curve of the cooler body. That portion of the radiation from the warmer body which corresponds to the additional area between the Planck curves is that which transfers heat to the cooler body, as empirical evidence verifies.

rgbatduke says:
November 20, 2012 at 2:49 pm
says
”There are a fair number of myths in the rebuttal above as well. For example, when it speaks of “variation in solar output” it fails to note the magnitude of that variation: miniscule on the scale of the insolation itself. Solar intensity variation is not a plausible explanation for climate variation. The correlation (or lack thereof) between other aspects of solar state and the climate is possibly convincing, possibly not, but either way is remarkably difficult to tie in causally in a completely believable way.”
I find it hard to believe you consider solar variation to be miniscule – look at it this way; 0.1% of 1360 w/m2 is 1.36W/m2 is it not? The energy equivalent ‘forcings’ bandied around by GCM models, etc, for alleged forcings are often in the similar ball park – 1 or 2 W/m2. Ergo, how can the miniscule amount (your words) of total solar insolation NOT be considered significant?
I fully accept that correlation does not equal causation, but given the observed variations in the suns output (not just TSI, but EUV, CME’s, etc) – it is more probable (than not) that this must have some direct effect on the earths climate based solely on the fact that solar energy (or extra terrestial radiation, if you prefer) is what primarily drives the climate. Of course, we have to add in all the other things, gamma rays, blah, blah, blah – but the NET result (even though we Don’t actually know yet!) is that solar variation probably plays a major but probably ‘underlying’ part – no matter how miniscule it may seem at the moment?

It is important for these uncertainties to be explained, but as per my previous comment, it is perhaps not so vital for ‘soundbites’? If we were being completely truthful (which many alarmists and the MSM are not!) we would likely be adding the caveat ‘We’re not sure’ or ‘We just don’t know’ to virtually every aspect of climate science! – and whilst you and I and other real scientists can perhaps look at various published work (or even the MSM reports) and ‘see’ the errors and blatant misrepresentation/twisting of findings, etc, – Joe Average, usually cannot do this!

This discussion is kind of why I have dropped out of being a vocal skeptic/lukewarmer. Time is on my side with the actual measurements, but continually having to apologise for people who deny the greenhouse effect takes up too much emotional energy.

The skeptical viewpoint is totally valid, but some of the theories which fall under the popular banner of ‘skeptic’ are not scientific, and are easily made to look foolish, which tarnishes proper scientific skepticism in the process. I’m fed up being wounded by ‘friendly fire’ from well-meaning, but misinformed people.

Can we also dismiss that “CO2 level follows the temperature” nonsense? One just have to give a quick glance at the temperature record (noise) and compare it with Mauna Loa graph of CO2 increase (smooth, exponential, modulo seasonal variations).

On short time scales, there can be wiggles where this happens. On the more significant longer time scales (centuries), CO2 level follows the temperature.

There is obviously a contradiction between different data sets here. phlogiston is looking at the ENSO Meter on this WUWT website. I noticed this as well, namely on November 6, the reading was 0.42, but the graph showed 0.50. Then on November 13, the reading dropped to 0.12, but the graph stayed at 0.50. An hour ago, the latest reading went up to 0.39, but the graph shows 0.7 now. WUWT? Was someone not wanting to discourage Gore or one of his followers before the big day? Was this an innocent mistake or is this graphgate?

Thanks Bob for your reply and Werner for the clarification, meticulous as always. I was indeed commenting on the disagreement between the value on the WUWT ENSO dial and the BOM Nino3.4 SST value shown at the top of the WUWT ENSO page. What is in fact the source of data form the ENSO dial? One would think it logical for the source to correspond to the ENSO graph shown prominently at the top of the ENSO data page. If it is a different source, this is illogical and confusing. If it is the same source, but someone is just being sloppy and haphazard in updating the dial, then do better.

Of course by the immutable Sods law, the moment I commented on the ENSO BOM value being 0.12 degrees, it promptly jumped up to 0.39 degrees. (But this is still less than 0.5, the value on the WUWT dial, which in response, jumped up to 0.7).

BTW the above posting and linked paper by DeFreitas are excellent and useful references.

Lets operate a tight blog-comment list here. To lie is to give false witness and report what you don’t believe you saw, heard or otherwised sensed (or concluded to be the case given your beliefs about the properties of things and their causal interdependence). Sometimes a deliberate lie happens to be true.

As regards the tale of the sweater the fact is that the sweater does not warm me up because it is actually the heat my body generates that warms up the sweater. The crucial additional fact is that the composite body that is me wearing a sweater has a different set of properties possessed by its outer surface, properties such that it loses less heat to the surrounding air and room, either by radiation, convection or conduction. The sweater, though warmer than the air in the room, is colder than my body and ‘Heat cannot of itself pass from one body to a hotter body’.

MYTH 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

So which part of this multiple clause statement is supposed to be the myth? Surely no one is unaware of the Mauna Loa measurements that show that CO2 levels have increased over the last 100 years? Furthermore anyone scientifically literate knows that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and more of it will warm the surface of the Earth more. So is the basis of this so-called myth supposed to be that the increased C02 levels are not due to human activity? This is remotely possible but since no serious alternative is proposed and C02 concentration is higher now than at any time in the past 800,000 years it is probably due to the burning of fossil fuel. So Myth 3 is not a myth and the whole credibility of ‘Friends of Science’ is thereby jeopardised.
“Satellites, weather balloons and ground stations all show cooling since 2001” is also a rather contentious statement. No evidence is offered to support this.
“In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft”. Again no evidence to support this. Credibility of ‘Friends of Science’ going down further.

I agree with rgbatduke, unsupported and unusual assertions need some reference to achieve credibility. Otherwise we end up like the Sky Dragon commentators here, just making up ‘facts’ to suit. It is even stranger that in the DeFreitas report, referenced in the article, we do have a useful quote from the IPCC 2001 scientific report itself (IPCC, 2001a, p.97)

The fact that the global mean temperature has increased since
the late 19th Century and that other trends have been observed
does not necessarily mean that an anthropogenic effect on the
climate system has been identified. Climate has always varied
on all time-scales, so the observed change may be natural.text

Followed by an interesting comment from Richard Lindzen, lead author of Chapter 7 of the main IPCC scientific report

The full IPCC report is an admirable description of research
activities in climate science, but it is not specifically directed at
policy. The “Summary for Policymakers” is, but it is also a very
different document. It represents a consensus of government
representatives (many of whom are also their nations’ Kyoto
representatives), rather than of scientists. The resulting document
has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures
up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.

davidmhoffer says:
November 20, 2012 at 4:22 pm
“It [There is no GHE] has about as much to do with science as butterflies affect the orbit of asteroids in the next galaxy.”
IMO, your statement is in the same category as the Alarmists.
The “Science is settled” re the GHE. No it isn’t. Do some more reading at PSI.
You’re being arrogant, and that is something skeptics despise.

From davidmhoffer on November 20, 2012 at 10:27 pm:If someone wants to argue that putting the sweater on cools you instead of warming you, by all means, have at it.

If I put on a sweater, and do just about anything physical, I sweat. (Was someone out there wondering why they got named sweat-ers?) The moisture causes heat loss by evaporation, leaving me cooler. I stay warmer wearing one or two work shirts left unbuttoned over a T-shirt, as long as it all stays dry. If however I stay just below when I start sweating, the clothing on my torso stays dry, I am warmer than without the sweater.

The equivalent for the Earth, increasing warmth past a threshold where evaporative cooling is initiated leading to cooling and less warmth, would be when the warmth retained by the GHE triggers thunderstorms. This is the mechanism described by Willis Eschenbach’s Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis, where warming triggers cooling, noting the GHE keeps the tropics in the temperature range that allows the thunderstorm cooling effect to operate:

So yes, under the right conditions, putting on a sweater will cool you instead of warming you, if you are warmed past the threshold where sweating begins. And the GHE of GHG’s can likewise trigger cooling that results in less remaining warmth.

Now wear that same jumpering in a sauna, where there is too much heat, your body would not last long, because the jumper SLOWS DOWN the energy loss.

Actually, the issue is the slowing of the rate of heat transfer.

As heard from my machining instructor who knew of steel mill work, foundry workers would wear thermal underwear, to keep the heat OUT. (Dated info, presumably these days they have better garments, refractory type.)

With a sauna at a higher temperature than normal human body temperature, which is normal, and with the dry heat quickly drying out clothing, the jumpering would allow your body to last longer than without it (within certain temporal limits of exposure, assuming there is insufficient hydration available, etc).

Hmmm – several comments to Davidmhoffer, but (so far) none have used the magic word: INSULATOR.

The sweater is an insulator. It slows the passage of thermal energy. My body is always radiating some heat, and a sweater slows the passage of that heat. More of my body’s natural heat stays closer to my body since the sweater is not allowing it to radiate away as quickly.

Incidentally I don’t wear sweaters, however I wear leather jackets. And I can assure you, when it’s cold outside (COLD, like -30C), the outside of the jacket is also cold (still, like -29.9C). The purpose of the jacket is to block the escape of body heat that would otherwise occur. The jacket is an insulator. It’s not warming up and re-radiation heat back toward me (at least, not a significant amount). The key factor in the entire clothing analogy is insulation.

There is no equivalent in the misty, dreamy world of “backradiation” and such. Atmospheres have mass. They get warmer from insolation (and maybe some tectonics, but not much). The thermal energy is redistributed to either higher altitudes or polar regions where it is easiest to radiate away to space. If small changes in CO2 alter the speed of this radiating, never fear: eventually the thermal energy will dissipate exactly as it has for billions of years.

The only way the clothing analogy can possibly hold is if the sweater or jacket has openings at the polar regions (which they do), or occasionally large holes open up to allow heat to escape (mimicking storms and such).

The temperature at the base of the atmosphere is set by the naturally occurring temperature gradient in that atmosphere, this being brought about by the adiabatic lapse rate, where the latter is a gradient determined for any planet by the mass of the atmosphere and the force of gravity – as is pressure. So that sets the gradient of the temperature plot, whilst its mean temperature is set by the Solar radiative flux. Hence the temperature at the base of the atmosphere is set by all these parameters, and that temperature will support the actual surface temperature.

But some readers may need to come to a better understanding of this “adiabatic lapse rate.” I know there are dry and moist values, but a mean will do for purposes of this discussion.

Consider a long radiation-proof and perfectly insulated cylinder full of air. Shake it well so that the internal temperature is uniform from top to bottom. Then stand it on end and wait for equilibrium. What happens is that, as molecules fall they lose potential energy and gain equivalent kinetic energy. But temperature is a measure of mean KE, so, if a region of air somehow loses height in the cylinder, it will end up with a higher temperature.

Now, when they are in free motion between collisions, molecules will respond to gravity and have a propensity to fall, even though this may mean, for example, that a horizontal path just acquires a slight downward curve. However, if too many populate lower regions, the air above will be less dense and so those that “bounce” in an upward direction will, on average, travel further than those that head downwards into the more populated region. So an equilibrium is established with more molecules per cubic whatever in the lower regions and less at the top. But this means that temperature measurements will be higher at the base of the column than at the top. When you apply this to the whole troposphere, you get significant differences which may be shown computationally to fully explain the observed temperatures at the base of the atmosphere, not only for Earth but also for Venus and other planets with atmospheres. (Note that you do not need to have an upward flow of air due to convection, or an input of energy at the base of the atmosphere.) The temperature at the base of the atmosphere sets the surface temperature primarily by conduction. It has nothing to do with any backradiation or Radiative GHE.

davidmhoffer
I was paying attention until you came up with the old chestnut about the sweater.
If back radiation from the sweater added to your body heat is what is heating you then at what point do you spontaneously combust?
This is a lousy analogy which does nothing to explain the earth’s surface temperature and the greenhouse analogy is not much better. Why not go and read Postma’s paper instead of simply sneering?
Then when you have organised your thoughts into a proper rebuttal you can publish it and we all might learn something.
One of the major criticisms levelled at the “mainstream” climatologists is that they aren’t prepared to listen to other hypotheses than their own. The sceptics are beginning to look just as bad.

Hmmm – several comments to Davidmhoffer, but (so far) none have used the magic word: INSULATOR.
…
Incidentally I don’t wear sweaters, however I wear leather jackets. (…)
…
The only way the clothing analogy can possibly hold is if the sweater or jacket has openings at the polar regions (which they do), or occasionally large holes open up to allow heat to escape (mimicking storms and such).

Science_Author:
“Consider a long radiation-proof and perfectly insulated cylinder full of air. Shake it well so that the internal temperature is uniform from top to bottom. Then stand it on end and wait for equilibrium. What happens is that, as molecules fall they lose potential energy and gain equivalent kinetic energy. But temperature is a measure of mean KE, so, if a region of air somehow loses height in the cylinder, it will end up with a higher temperature.”

Although I did not agree with the logic of Robert Brown’s post here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/24/refutation-of-stable-thermal-equilibrium-lapse-rates/, I am convinced by a paper mentioned in the attendant comments, namely, Velasco, S., Roman, F.L. and White, J.A., 1995, Eur. J. Phys. v17, 43-44, that, contrary to what I believe you are here contending, there would be no detectable lapse rate at equilibrium. (Several commenters on that post interpreted Velasco et al. as holding that there would be no temperature difference at all between the gas column’s top and bottom, whereas my interpretation is that a difference in mean molecular translational kinetic energy would indeed exist between two levels but that it would be undetectable in practice, and, the Uncertainty Principle being what it is, perhaps even in principle.)

In any event, you may find the arguments elicited by that post interesting. I know I did.

rgbatduke says: November 20, 2012 at 2:49 pm
says: “…….no evidence of any sea level rise” in a couple of places. ……… There is overwhelmingly sound evidence of global sea level rise. At the whopping rate of roughly 3 mm/year, on average, nearly constant over nearly 100 years. That is 30 cm a century, around a foot a century. This not “no” SLR, it is “unimportant” SLR — so far. Why not state it correctly, and back it up with the simple tide gauge/satellite data? ……” Cites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
And bear in mind the satellite data is perhaps even more likely to be in error than the tide gauge data, with the latter only registering an average rise of 1.7 mm per year (range up to 2.7 mm/yr) in the last half of the century. See http://ilrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/GRASP_COSPAR_paper.pdf re some of the problems with current satellite data.

Douglas 1997 shows about 18 cm in 120 years, ie 1.5 mm per year … this using tidal gauges selected for the following criteria:
1. Each record should be at least 60 years in length
2. Not be located at collisional plate boundaries
3. At least 80% complete
4. Show reasonable agreement at low frequencies with nearby gauges sampling the same water mass
5. Not be located in regions subject to large post-glacial rebound

… C02 concentration is higher now than at any time in the past 800,000 years it is probably due to the burning of fossil fuel.

Don’t the smaller leaf stomata over the past few thousand years indicate that CO2 was higher then? I’ve seen it argued that the ice cores don’t measure CO2 as accurately as stomata, owing to diffusion, etc.

Because I’ve read a considerable amount of their drivel on their site already, and I’ve debated the matter in excessive detail with them before. In fact, I suspect their disciple in this thread is someone I’ve debated before under a different name. Makes the same mistakes and comes up with the same circular arguments. I’ve tried to provide a couple of simple explanations that prove my point without going into excessively complex arguments. The Earth is hotter than the moon and gets the same insolation. End of discussion. The reasoning presented by this crew of magicians to explain this defies an incredible amounts of known physics, and would take many hours of writing to debunk in totality. I’ve already been there, done that, know how much time it takes, and have neither the time nor the energy right now. The last time I did it their rebuttals descended to things like “well, what if someone was standing in front of the door of the room and that changed the measurements?”

In this thread alone it was first proposed that temp could be maintained without energy input, then when I pointed out that a subsequent point by the same person required energy input, the story changed to say that energy input was required after all. The rebuttal to my sweater example has sufficient errors in it that responding to them in full would take at least four or five hours of my time. Knowing that it will end up with some lame retort like “oh yeah, well what if someone was standing in the doorway” I’m just not interested. Further, there are several excellent articles on this forum already explaining exactly how the GHE works, search for the series by Ira Glickstein. I also recommend the various articles and comments by rgbatduke (Robert Brown) in his responses to the science presented by Nikolov and Zeller. S_A’s arguments above share a lot of N&Z’s arguments some of which have merit, but as a whole picture, suffer from the clear criticisms pointed out by rgbatduke which are already available on this site, and which deal with the matter in the kind of detail required to continue this discussion. Half truths are the most difficult to debunk because they are half true, but debunked they have been, just read the articles I’ve pointed you at.

your debunking of the skydragons is commendable. Personally I think they should join the list of topics that are not welcomed here, like chemtrails, especially since they use fake names to appear in several places to promote the nonsense.

The two 97% surveys referred to are Doran and Anderegg. The flaw in the first (“Doran”) survey was that it asked innocuous, hence irrelevant questions that skeptics would endorse, namely that the Earth has been warming and that “human activities” have played a significant role in the warming. Here are quotes from a few WUWTers on the topic:

Richard M says:
July 7, 2010 at 5:37 am

Zilla, the 97% number [from Doran] includes all those that believe that CO2 causes some warming. That includes Lindzen and about 95% of all skeptics. That’s right, most of the people who post here also fall into the 97% number. The number you fail to understand is that ONLY 41% believe in the “C” in CAGW. And, the survey itself was taken before ClimateGate so I’d expect that number would be less today.
—————-

Poptech says:
November 17, 2012 at 9:24 pm

The paper used in the show is the Anderegg et al. paper whose methodology is not reproducible due to the Google Scholar illiteracy of the authors,

Search results from Google Scholar cannot be used in scientific studies because Google Scholar is a search engine not a static database and it does include results from only scientific journals. The computer illiterates who authored and reviewed the paper apparently had no idea how worthless their study was.

Anderegg, we will recall, used an arbitrary criteria to establish not the actual numbers of alarmists vs skeptics, but rather their level of expertise. (papers published+citations) with the word “climate” in the paper. (Yes, vapid in and of itself, I know, but that’s for another day.) The ironic part is that while attempting to establish a base group of people for comparison (convinced vs unconvinced) they came to the ratio of 903:472. That is to say, 903 alarmists and 472 skeptical scientists. When whittled down by applying the criteria of needing at least 20 papers published using the word “climate”, they came to the ratio of 817: 93. Still that’s only 91%. Anderegg only gets to 98% by using his criteria and finding the top 50 scientists.

I think one very clear distinction should be made about whom is and is not expert in the original question of the survey, relating to the attribution of climate changes. Are we interested in classifying all “climate scientists” as such? Or limiting that to those that have researched and published specifically about the causes of climate change?

I fail to consider researchers that solely publish the hyperbole of future climate (hand waving) to be qualified in relative attribution. Those that just use GCM output to predict the movements of flora, fauna, and viruses, for example, without any questioning of the GCM output, itself, are simply not at all qualified to consider attribution.

—————-

Spector says:
July 17, 2010 at 9:28 am

RE: Jimbo: (July 17, 2010 at 1:56 am) “‘A few weeks ago, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a paper that claimed to have found evidence that scientists who support official climate change theory are vastly more numerous and expert than scientists who do not.’”

Yes, I believe this is more a case of accepting a consensus widely judged to be ‘politically correct’ rather than the result of any independent research or study by the scientists involved. I suspect the same result could be obtained from a survey of night-club comedians, news journalists, or holders of political office
————–

P. Solar says:
July 19, 2012 at 1:18 am

Yet another level of selection bias is idue to the difficulty of getting anything refuting AGW published. This has been an acute problem in the last five years, so preselecting “active climate scientists” on their recent publishing record is yet another way of excluding any dissenting experts from the survey results.

This is an appauling pseudo study, and I congratulate your detailed exposure of this fraud.
————-

David L. Hagen says:
November 18, 2012 at 3:05 pm

John Christy of University of Alabama, Huntsville, another of the prominent “unconvinced” scientists analyzed in the study, blames the disparity between the two groups on “the tight interdependency between funding, reviewers, popularity. … We are being “black‑listed,” as best I can tell, by our colleagues.”

Pat Michaels, a well-known climate skeptic, says in an e-mail that the paper’s conclusions are “a self-fulfilling prophecy.” He notes that “I have three manuscripts that have been out for nearly two years. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with them except they indicate that warming will be at the low end of the frequency distribution given by [a middle-of-the-road IPCC greenhouse emissions scenario]. Every time we answer reviewers, the editor then sends it out to someone else to cook up another complaint.
…………..
Scientists publishing papers related to “climate” but who did not use that word are disenfranchised. Anderegg et al. actually found 66% (903) who were “convinced” on majority AGW, and 34% (472) who were “unconvinced”. The 97% only comes from excluding all but the most published with > 20 papers on “climate”. See: Is it 97% or 66% of climate scientists who believe in AGW? For further critiques, see WUWT on Anderegg. [I.e., With this search: https://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=Anderegg ]
—————-

John Mathon says:
October 30, 2012 at 11:21 am

“point the finger says I thought Mann and other climate modelers thought meteoroligists were ignorant of math and science?” Since more than half of meteorologists question AGW alarmism from polls I’ve seen this is why the “team” of 75 believers (from the 97% survey) didn’t bother to include meteorologists in the survey results?
—————–

The Viscount (Monckton) wrote:

The Professor also, inevitably, trots out the results of two “surveys” of climate scientists, but carefully fails to mention that one of the surveys was an unscientific, self-selected sample of just 79 scientists, of whom 77 agreed (as skeptical scientists would agree) that the weather has been getting warmer and that Man is at least partly responsible, and that the other survey – in fact, not a survey at all, but a compilation of names of scientists who had signed various petitions and had otherwise indicated a political preference on the issue – claimed that 97-98% of the most prolific climate researchers believed that “anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for most of the unequivocal warming of the Earth’s average global temperature over the 20th century.” This “survey” was evidentially valueless, because no scientist was actually asked for his or her opinion. Opinions were imputed to them by the compilers of the “survey”. Again, many skeptical scientists would agree that the world warmed in the 20th century, and would accept that at least some of that warming (if not necessarily most of it) was caused by us.

But the fact of manmade warming is not at issue. The real question is whether the rate of warming caused by us is likely to prove catastrophic. Yet neither of these much-quoted surveys asked whether the “unequivocal” warming would eventually prove catastrophic: for the assent to any such proposition would be likely to be well below 98%.
—————–

Brian H says:
July 19, 2012 at 2:59 am

Part of the travesty is the assumption that there is such a critter as a “climate scientist”. This concocted construction has zero academic or other history, and if any set of qualifications and expertise for it were to be drawn up it would encompass everything from mathematics to physics to statistics to hydrology to chemistry to biology to model development to geology and much more. No human with all the requisite skills and background exists.
——————–

Those who are committed to the AGW view, agitate for it vigorously because they fear the sky is falling. Those who are not…think their own thoughts and maybe write columns or serve on review boards. Is one supposed to write a paper for a peer-reviewed journal, the content of which would be to point out the sloppiness of other scientists? No. Thus, as Oreskes pointed out in her summary of her survey of literature on the topic, there was not a SINGLE article in her sample rejecting the AGW view. Not surprising. Professional scientists have better work to do.
———-

daveburton says:
July 18, 2012 at 11:24 am

That “97%” claim is significant, not for what it what it reveals about the science of climate change, but for what it reveals about the Climate Movement spin machine. It turns out to be a classic example of the Big Lie. Here are some articles about it:

Many skeptics believe that “human activity” has a significant upward effect on temperature, but they’re thinking of land-use changes. The survey question looks like it was “loaded” to catch them in its sieve.

Climatology has become so identified with the CACA Cult (CACA=Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism) that few would enter the field without also being believers, or without having undergone indoctrination in its tenets. Alarmism isn’t the conclusion of most of these scientwists, it’s their launch pad.

I suspect that most climatologists went into the field because it gave them an outlet for their greenie finger-pointing. Climatology has become a branch of environmentalism, with its “don’t touch nature” bias and its knee-jerk precautionism. Similar biased selection occurred in the field of recovered memory therapy.

If they were skeptical and did enter the field, they would be unlikely to get grants, and so would be hard up for material to publish. If they nevertheless did write skeptical critiques of warmism, they’d have a hard time getting them published. (See the recent trouble Spencer had getting his paper published, or McIntyre et al.)

OTOH, an alarmed alarmist is going to churn out all sorts of unlikely doomsday scenarios and get them published. (E.g., warming is causing bats to die off–a now-debunked thesis published twice in Nature, while papers skeptical of that idea were rejected.)
————–

So is Zimmermann defining expertise or introducing a selection bias here? It has not gone unnoticed that perhaps those scientists that self identify as climate scientists, are perhaps those that are more activist minded for a consensus.

It is quite possible for example, in this survey for scientist or even colleagues with identical qualifications, to self identify differently. Thus in this survey respondents could even be co-authors of a paper, but this survey would categorise one as more expert than the other. Who knows if this happened or not, the fact that it is possible demonstrates the flaws in the thinking.

Additionally those that are in the 97% group are deemed to be more expert in climate science, keeping more abreast of the ‘whole’ field than the others.

“..The participants in this group are actively publishing climate scientists, and those most likely to be familiar with the theory and mechanisms of climate change, as well as have a thorough understanding of the current research and be actively contributing to the field..” (Zimmermann feedback)

This I think is a huge assumption, ‘climate science’ is a huge multidisciplinary field.

Is a geologist that identifies as a ‘climate scientist’ any more an expert on astrophysics, atmospheric physics, statistics, etc than those classified as have less expertise in the categories identified above.

Additionally the responses may merely capture (only the last 5 years publishing Q5) those junior more activist post docs, etc that self identify as climate scientist, where perhaps the older more published ‘expert’ colleagues describe themselves by the qualifications, not as climate scientists. And of course, by the very nature of the survey, (which was commented on in the feedback) surveys of this type are potentially self selecting by the probability that those that are most concerned are more willing to take part.
——————-

Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch have just published the findings of a survey conducted with practicing climate scientists. The survey was conducted in 2008 with 379 climate scientists who had published papers or were employed in climate research institutes and dealt with their confidence in models, the IPCC and a variety of other topics. The survey findings are here: http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/GKSS_2010_9.CLISCI.pdf

Most of the questions were asked using a Likert Scale, which most of you have probably used in filling out one of the numerous online surveys that are on almost any website. “A set of statements was presented to which the respondent was asked to indicate his or her level of agreement or disagreement, for example, 1 = strongly agree, 7 = strongly disagree.

The value of 4 can be considered as an expression of ambivalence or impartiality or, depending on the nature of the question posed, for example, in a question posed as a subjective rating such as “How much do you think climate scientists are aware of the information that policy makers incorporate into their decision making process?”, a value of 4 is no longer a measure of ambivalence, but rather a metric.”

The total number of respondents is large enough to make statistically significant statements about the population of similarly qualified climate scientists, and the response rate to the invitations is in line with surveys conducted among academics and professionals. What that means is that we can be fairly confident that if we conducted a census of all such scientists the answers would not be very different to what is found in the survey’s findings.

Typically in a commercial survey, analysts would group the top two responses and report on the percentages of respondents that ticked box 6 or 7 on this scale. Using that procedure here makes it clear that there are areas where scientists are not completely confident in what is being preached–and that they don’t like some of the preachers. In fact, let’s start with the opinion of climate scientists about those scientists, journalists and environmental activists who present extreme accounts of catastrophic impacts.

The survey’s question read, “Some scientists present extreme accounts of catastrophic impacts related to climate change in a popular format with the claim that it is their task to alert the public. How much do you agree with this practice?”

Less than 5% agreed strongly or very strongly with this practice. Actually 56% disagreed strongly or very strongly. Joe Romm, Tim Lambert, Michael Tobis–are you listening? The scientists don’t like what you are doing.

And not because they are skeptics–these scientists are very mainstream in their opinions about climate science and are strong supporters of the IPCC. Fifty-nine percent (59%) agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “The IPCC reports are of great use to the advancement of climate science.” Only 6% disagreed. And 86.5% agreed or strongly agreed that “climate change is occurring now” and 66.5% agreed or strongly agreed that future climate “will be a result of anthropogenic causes.”

Even so, there are areas of climate science that some people want to claim is settled, but where scientists don’t agree.

Only 12% agree or strongly agree that data availability for climate change analysis is adequate. More than 21% disagree or strongly disagree.

Only 25% agree or strongly agree that “Data collection efforts are currently adequate,” while 16% disagree or strongly disagree.

Perhaps most importantly, only 17.75% agree or strongly agree with the statement, “The state of theoretical understanding of climate change phenomena is adequate.” An equal percentage disagreed or strongly disagreed.

Only 22% think atmospheric models deal with hydrodynamics in a manner that is adequate or very adequate. Thirty percent (30%) feel that way about atmospheric models’ treatment of radiation, and only 9% feel that atmospheric models are adequate in their treatment of water vapor–and not one respondent felt that they were ‘very adequate.’

And only 1% felt that atmospheric models dealt well with clouds, while 46% felt they were inadequate or very inadequate. Only 2% felt the models dealt adequately with precipitation, and 3.5% felt that way about modeled treatment of atmospheric convection.

For ocean models, the lack of consensus continued. Only 20% felt ocean models dealt well with hydrodynamics, 11% felt that way about modeled treatment of heat transport in the ocean, 6.5% felt that way about oceanic convection, and only 12% felt that there exists an adequate ability to couple atmospheric and ocean models.

Only 7% agree or strongly agree that “The current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of turbulence,” and only 26% felt that way about surface albedo. Only 8% felt that way about land surface processes, and only 11% about sea ice.

And another shocker–only 32% agreed or strongly agreed that the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases emitted from anthropogenic sources.

As Judith Curry has been noting over at her weblog, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the building blocks of climate science. The scientists know this. The politicians, propagandists and the converted acolytes haven’t gotten the message. If this survey does not educate them, nothing will.

The reasoning presented by this crew of magicians to explain this defies an incredible amounts of known physics, and would take many hours of writing to debunk in totality. I’ve already been there, done that, know how much time it takes, and have neither the time nor the energy right now.
. . . . . . . . . .
The rebuttal to my sweater example has sufficient errors in it that responding to them in full would take at least four or five hours of my time.

It would eliminate rewriting-effort if you kept a file of your comments for recylcling later. I’ve been keeping a file of favorite comments of others from WUWT, under about 500 category-headings. (I’m up to 46 megabytes of a Word file—or 7300 pages. I’ve sent it (in two parts) to Steve Goreham for use in his online collection of quotes.)

Science(fiction)_Author says:”The temperature at the base of the atmosphere sets the surface temperature primarily by conduction.”

That’s exactly backwards; the sun heats the surface which then heats the atmosphere (lower). The amount of energy the surface receives from the sun “sets” the surface temperature which by conduction, convection, and radiation heats the base of the atmosphere which having absorbed heat radiates IR which in turn slows the net heat loss radiating from the surface.

Ok, let’s back-up a bit. Your entire argument boils down to since PV=nRT and n and V are essentially constant and R is constant then T is directly proportional to P by what is essentially a constant “C” = V/nR such that T = CP, therefore if you know the pressure you know the temperature. Furthermore, the pressure value determines the temperature value. Right?

Wrong. This is a complete misapplication of the Natural Gas Law.

If the pressure determined the temperature a beach in Iceland (@ sea level pressure of 14.7 psi) would have the same temperature as a beach in Florida (@ sea level pressure of 14.7 psi).

You’ve confused cause and effect. The adiabatic lapse rate is determined by a combination of factors such that it can be used as a tool for estimating temperature from pressure or pressure from temperature but is not determining the factors like temperature itself. It is not an intrinsic property; it is an extrinsic property that arises from intrinsic properties such as density, composition, gravitational field, etc. Ask yourself this: If we dropped our atmosphere onto Mars would it have the same lapse rate? The answer is NO because even though the density is still the same the weight isn’t, therefore, the lapse rate is not an intrinsic property.

The existence of the greenhouse effect is not in question; it has been measured all around the world. Engineers have been taking the greenhouse effect into account in calculations involving outdoor cooling rates for decades. As you know, a body radiates based on its temperature as described by the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. Back in the day when estimating the radiant heat loss from an outdoor object we would subtract the “apparent sky temperature” from the body’s temperature in order to calculate the NET radiation from the body. The body still radiates based on its temperature but it is also receiving radiation from the atmosphere proportional to the “apparent sky temperature” such that the NET radiant heat loss is the difference in the body’s temperature and the “apparent sky temperature” in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. This is how we used to account for “backradiation” or the “greenhouse effect” even though we didn’t use either of those terms and we had a pretty limited table of “apparent sky temperature” values. These days, they use a much more accurate method for accounting for the GHE in such calculations. Please read:http://www.asterism.org/tutorials/tut37%20Radiative%20Cooling.pdf

What’s in question is the magnitude of GHE “enhancement”, the results of such “enhancement”, and what may be causing such an “enhancement”.

davidmhoffer says:
November 20, 2012 at 8:05 pm
Science_Author;
For example, you cite Venus as an example of such a radiative GHE. It is not. Its atmosphere of CO2 is so massive that hardly any Solar radiation gets through to the surface
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And yet it is hot. Hotter than Mercury. How’s that work? Oh, I see… you say:

Science_Author;
The atmosphere of any planet will have a temperature gradient based on the adiabatic lapse rate. This is as it says, adiabatic, and thus does not require the addition of energy.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It certainly does, it requires the addition of energy at the bottom of the atmosphere, i.e. the planet’s surface. When heat is added at the top of the atmosphere you get a stable profile (not adiabatic, in the stratosphere for example).

Still gases are notoriously poor thermal conductors. Anyone thinking the heat energy needed to maintain the adiabatic lapse rate is significant when convection doesn’t play a role should actually calculate the the heat transferred by conduction through a column of air at the lapse rate. A “back of the napkin” estimation will show It is insignificant and can be ignored.

But, even in a lab, a column of air in a tall sealed container will exhibit a small temperature difference between top and bottom, even without apparent air movement.**
…
** I have read other experiments confirming this, but here is one I just found in a few seconds on Google.

Oh, it’s someone hawking their BOOK, because their BOOK has the good stuff with all the answers, who frequently refers to their BOOK in the text, in all-caps, including as well the ORDERING FORM link for the BOOK.

Which as seen on their home page, is all about using the temperature differences between ends of a column of air to create a “PERPETUUM MOBILE OF THE SECOND KIND”! Buy the BOOK, build your own, and you may be the first to generate usable amounts of electricity!

There are two separate lines of attack in those who say the GHE does not exist, though. The one fallacious line generally rests on energy conservation for closed systems, of which the Earth is not one having a persistent external power source. This LOA denies that, e.g., a cooler object can heat a warmer object. However, this principle only applies in an isolated system. Ultimately, all actions on Planet Earth lead back to the Sun, which is very much hotter than the Earth’s surface.

Another line says that back radiation exists, but cannot heat the planet’s surface because of feedback effects which tend to nullify it. I have not seen anyone lay out such an argument with compelling empirical evidence, but empirical evidence is also in inadequate supply for establishing that there is no such feedback.

All we can say for certain, I believe, is that, all things being equal, in general circumstances, the effect of greenhouse gases should be to warm the surface beyond what it would be without such an atmosphere. But, whether and by what degree “all things are equal” on Planet Earth is very much a valid topic of debate. Right now, quite frankly, there appears to be very little causal connection running from CO2 concentration to temperature. In fact, quite the opposite is true: there appears to be a strong causal relationship running from temperature to CO2.

I’d also advise against your sweater example. Convection of heat away from your body is the major means of heat transfer. The sweater inhibits that convection. Unless it has a specific IR reflecting layer, as in a mylar space blanket, I doubt significant thermal radiation is inhibited at all.

Be useful to show up another tedious lie:
All those disagreeing with the AGW theory are being funded by “Big Oil”.

There is no such thing as ‘big oil’. What you see as ‘oil companies’ like Shell or BP are energy companies and also diversify in many other areas. Economics works on supply and demand, so if you restrict supply and keep the same demand the prices rise. So restricting all fossil fuel exploration and production will simply raise the prices of what they have and make it last a lot longer. Not to mention the subsidies to diversify into renewables and free carbon permits they sell for millions. Maybe that’s why the Climate Research Unit was partly funded by ‘big oil’.

Although I have a strong scientific background, I am not a climate scientist, and never will be. I am a forest geneticist, so make it a point to argue passionately on matters relating to forest genetics and tree improvement, but leave the climate science to others far more qualified than I am. Thus, I rarely comment on WUWT, preferring to learn from others.

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.” A quote usually attributed to Abraham Lincoln.

And, while it may come as a shock to some on this forum, not everything you read on the internet is true. Shocking I know, but a word to the wise. Before commenting on any given WUWT story, it behooves you to actually read through the posts ahead of you. In many cases, it would save you lots of embarrassment.

Finally, as an alumnus of NC State, it pains me deeply to agree with rgbatduke. But, it only proves that even the occasional Dookie can have common sense. Maybe the proximity to Raleigh is the source of his cool-headed outlook. I agree completely: there is much that we simply do not know. This is the primary source of my skepticism concerning the theory of anthropogenic CO2 driven global warming – there is simply so much about a chaotic system we don’t begin to understand. Add to this the historical records that clearly show warmer,colder, wetter, drier, etc. conditions under widely varying atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and I remained unconvinced.

MYTH 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

So which part of this multiple clause statement is supposed to be the myth? Surely no one is unaware of the Mauna Loa measurements that show that CO2 levels have increased over the last 100 years? Furthermore anyone scientifically literate knows that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and more of it will warm the surface of the Earth more. So is the basis of this so-called myth supposed to be that the increased C02 levels are not due to human activity? This is remotely possible but since no serious alternative is proposed and C02 concentration is higher now than at any time in the past 800,000 years it is probably due to the burning of fossil fuel. So Myth 3 is not a myth and the whole credibility of ‘Friends of Science’ is thereby jeopardised.

I agree that MYTH 3 needs to be changed. It was written a long time ago. If you read the Fact part, you we see that we agree that “human produced Carbon dioxide has increased”, so that is not the myth. I also believe that the vast majority of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is due to human caused emissions. Increased CO2 makes the greenhouse effect stronger and will warm the earth a little. We claim that “there is no proof that CO2 is the main driver of global warming.” and that the sun in the main driver of climate change.

My submission to the Canadian Government on coal-fired electrical generating plants herehttp://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=545
shows that I expect the CO2 doubling to cause a 0.5 C temperature increase, but there is much uncertainty in this estimate. The water vapour content of the atmosphere near the tropopause declines with increasing temperatures according to radiosonde data, offsetting the warming effect of increasing water in the lower troposphere. When the forcing and feedback cloud responses are correctly separated, the satellite data shows clouds provide a negative feedback response. Seehttp://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=533 andhttp://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=508
I have therefore changed MYTH 3 on the Friends of Science website so it ends with “thus causing most of the earth’s warming of the last 100 years.”

MYTH 11 – Humans can resolve any noticeable difference and do something about a rising CO2 with current politics. (west CO2 = no difference)

Bart,

“Another line says that back radiation exists, but cannot heat the planet’s surface because of feedback effects which tend to nullify it. I have not seen anyone lay out such an argument with compelling empirical evidence, but empirical evidence is also in inadequate supply for establishing that there is no such feedback.”

A bucket of water in the shade outside from the cold water tap in the morning doesn’t warm all day. A bucket of water in the sun outside all day from the cold water tap warms 35c. Back radiation made no difference to the bucket of water, but the sun made a huge difference.

A clear night warms up when it clouds over, scientific evidence of back radiation. The above example scientific evidence it can’t warm a volume of water.

“These frequencies, with corresponding intensities, merely resonate, and the effect is that the radiation is immediately re-emitted without any of its electro-magnetic energy ever being converted to thermal energy in the target. That is, it does not transfer heat. However, the warmer body radiates more intensely [as a result of back radiation] and in more frequencies, and its Planck curve is thus higher and broader,”

If the warmer body radiates more intensely, does that not mean that it would have a higher temperature after all, as per the Stefan-Boltzman equation;
Radiative energy flux = T^4
Or am I missing something?

Brain F@rt alert! The dropping our atmosphere onto Mars was a bad example on my part. That would basically be the equivalent to putting an amount of gas into a larger container since Mars’ gravity is less than Earth’s, which would increase the volume and decrease the density THEREBY changing the lapse rate.

Consider a long radiation-proof and perfectly insulated cylinder full of air.
…So an equilibrium is established with more molecules per cubic whatever in the lower regions and less at the top. But this means that temperature measurements will be higher at the base of the column than at the top.

It’s quite simple, really. Such a column of air will go isothermal, same temperature top to bottom. Same amount of thermal energy per volume, not per molecule as your belief would have it. Those air molecules with the highest kinetic energy will travel upwards the most, simple physics, conversion of kinetic energy to gravitational potential energy. Gravity would leave less molecules at the top, but they’ll have more energy, and the temperature, based on the average kinetic energy, would be the same as at the bottom.

Goes right back to thermodynamics. Just picture a perpendicular plane intersecting the cylinder somewhere, or put a mark on the outside of the cylinder to denote a level, same thing. If there are more molecules at a higher temperature below, thus more thermal energy per volume below, then hotter would flow to colder, thermal energy would flow upward. This would continue until above and below would have the same thermal energy per volume. Your cylinder of air would go isothermal.

More complete and other explanations are at that link. Go read, hopefully you’ll learn something.

FACT: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1) “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2) “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”
———————————–
But wouldn’t this mean that deleting the two statements shows they they believe they had proved it, at least to themselves?

The first sentence of the FACT statement should be changed. I suggest:
FACT: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft approved and accepted by a panel of scientists. See:http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=3

Why do so many on both sides accept that the atmospheric CO2 increase is almost entirely anthropogenic? Even the IPCC report shows that natural sources and sinks of CO2 are vastly greater than man’s contribution. As far as CO2 is concerned, it seems to me that the atmosphere is like a river in that the partial pressure of CO2 indicates the flow rate between sources and sinks. The higher the CO2 level, the faster plants grow which is analogous to a higher river’s height indicating a faster flow rate. To blame most of the CO2 increase on the burning of fossil fuel is like blaming most of the rise of a river on one small stream that is being monitored while ignoring all others. Climate scientists seem to argue that, as natural sinks for CO2, tree growth is constant, while at the same time, arguing that annual growth rate variations, as indicated by tree ring data, is a good proxy for certain climate variables – amazing.

John West wrote That’s exactly backwards; the sun heats the surface which then heats the atmosphere (lower).” Yes, it always looks that way on Earth, but this does not explain the level of surface temperatures and how they were reached over the life of the Earth.

It doesn’t happen on Venus, because only about 2.5% of Solar radiation gets through the atmosphere to the surface. So there is nowhere near enough energy coming out of the Venus surface to heat that atmosphere. Explain that any other way.

The adiabatic lapse rate sets the gradient. The mean Solar intensity above any particular point determines the level of the whole temperature plot for that region. So both these factors determine the temperature at any particular point. (Previously I was talking of means for a whole planet.) The mass of the atmosphere above a particular region will also vary, thus affecting the adiabatic lapse rate for that region. These are the reasons it’s colder in Iceland.

Re Adiabatic Lapse Rate

The following empirical evidence is put forward in support of my comment above which explains how the lapse rate does not depend on surface heating at the base or convection currents. The conclusion reached by Roderich Graeff reads …

In an isolated system the temperature of the walls depend on the speed of the impinging molecules. The average of their speed is lower at the top than at the bottom as each molecule gets accelerated on its way downwards and decelerated upwards. Through this energy is transported from the upper to the lower wall until equilibrium is reached.

This results in a temperature difference between the upper and lower wall, with the upper wall having a lower and the lower wall having a higher temperature .

REPLY: Ignore him. This denial of the greenhouse effect is just more CRAP from Doug Cotton under another one of his FAKE NAMES to get around the fact that he’s been banned from WUWT for thread bombing with Principia junk. He and the whole crowd of slayers can take a flying leap. Doug, let me be clear. You are creating fake email addresses. One more incident and I launch a complaint against your ISP. Now, for the last time GET OUT – Anthony

A clear night warms up when it clouds over, scientific evidence of back radiation. The above example scientific evidence it can’t warm a volume of water……”””””

You might be the first scientist to have observed it to warm up on a clear night after it clouds over.

Most people observe that the Temperature falls from its daytime high, after sunset, usually attributed to a lack of solar energy input, and an energy leakage to space. And as a result of this observed cooling, with sufficient humidity, it eventually gets down to the dew point at high altitudes (lapse rate) and THEN the clouds form (cloudover).

But the Temperature continues to fall. You may be the first to have seen it rise instead.

Hmmm. When radiation leaves a body, it does not know what lies ahead of it, so it cannot choose to avoid a hotter object in its path. By the time it reaches the hotter object, it cannot remember what temperature it had when it started, so it doesn’t know whether it is supposed to convert to thermal energy or to run away. Equally, the hotter object wasn’t watching when the radiation set off on its journey, so it doesn’t know whether to accept or reject it.>>>>> The point of the 2nd law is that the amount of heat delivered by radiation from the hotter body to the cooler body cannot be less than that going the other way.<<<<<….."""""

Well Electromagnetic radiation knows nothing whatsoever about Temperature or "Heat" or "heating" , and in particular NO heat is conveyed by EM radiation.

"Heating" requires a physical mechanical contact between atoms and molecules of real materials; EM radiation needs NO SUCH medium for its transport.

So we can heat by conduction, in which atoms or molecules bang into each other and interchange mechanical energy which we call "heat", rather loosely instead of heating. Alternatively we can actually bulk transport the physical medium itself along with its mechanical "heat" energy, which is convection, and then there are the various phase change mechanisms which result in heating or cooling.

EM radiation transports no "Heating" effect at all. It is only when that EM energy is wasted by absorption in materials which cannot usefully utilize it, such as solar cells, which convert EM energy to electricity, that the energy is converted to waste "heat".

So we get NO heat from the sun; we make all our heat right here on earth. And "heat" energy cannot be 100% converted back into EM radiant energy; but EM radiant energy can be 100% converted to waste "heat".

So EM radiation falling on hot bodies, does not invoke the second law of thermodynamics, which relates to the macro process of energy flows in a cyclic machine, in which "heat" can flow back and forth between hot and cold bodies, but with the net flow being from hot to cold; absent any other effect, such as doing work on the system, as in a refrigerator.

Photons can go just about anywhere they darn well please. The same half degree or so solid angle of EM radiant energy emitted from earth can go to either the moon or the sun, with equal facility, and without violating any laws of Physics.

Science_Author: If there is no greenhouse effect, please explain why the stratosphere has been cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming.

REPLY: Ignore him. This denial of the greenhouse effect is just more CRAP from Doug Cotton under another one of his FAKE NAMES to get around the fact that he’s been banned from WUWT for thread bombing with Principia junk. He and the whole crowd of slayers can take a flying leap. – Anthony

Not a ground breaking observation any meteorologist will know about it, just like the temperature cools when it clouds over during the day time. Only need your own temperature instrument to observe this outcome.

The night will still cool once it becomes cloudy later after it has risen, but the rise from clear to cloudy is usually much bigger in a short period of time. The clouds just slow the loss of energy to the atmosphere, that’s why it still cools later during the night once it has become cloudy. The difference in minimum temperature with the same synoptic weather patterns between a cloudy night and a clear one can be huge.

I suspected that it was him. Tx for the confirmation. I thought it was just a newcomer who had been suckered by the site at first, but as the conversation went on, I started thinking…. I’ve seen this all before….

I like the suggestion upthread about keeping detailed rebuttals in a word document for easy cut and paste, but that takes time to build up. I still think sticking it on your blogroll under “unreliable” is worth a thought, though putting it there may result in “unintended consequences” ;-)

David Hagen: 10-years is too short of a time period to say anything about climate. Once you include the effects of autocorrelation, that interval effectively has about 2-3 yrs of independent degrees of freedom.

I’ve had it up to my Keester with these “slayers”. They badger me constantly behind the scenes to carry their stuff from the fake journal “Principia” and then try to throw guilt trips and belittlement when I tell them no. For the record, its not just no, but HELL NO. These folks are a scourge to other skeptics, because the warmers rightly point to them as examples of scientific quackery and then unjustly paint us with the same brush.

I’ve made it abundantly clear to Doug Cotton that his commentary is unwelcome, as are discussions on bigfoot, UFO’s, chemtrails, and other quackery.

There is plenty of room for skepticism in models, feedbacks, sensitivity, and amplifications. We don’t need to commit scientific hari-kari by denying the greenhouse effect exists…which is what Cotton and Slayers et al are doing. Some days I wonder if they aren’t a “plant” to damage climate skepticism, because they act with the same sort of zealotry that we’ve seen from some of the save the planet types.

I’m stepping up my moderation policy to delete this stuff on sight now that Cotton has pulled this back door stunt.

No apparent change at this site which is geologically stable and in a well sheltered cove.

To me the notion that we can meaningfully measure the surface of a restless, heaving, tossing ocean within the accuracy of millimeters, when there is a twice daily tide measured in meters that is never the same, and windblown waves in multiples of meters, is absurd. Almost as absurd as the notion of a global average temperature that has any real meaning.

The real myth is that we are some how driving this bus when no one can show me where the steering wheel is and there ain’t no breaks or gas petal. But we sure can waste an awful lot of time and money arguing over who gets to sit in the driver’s seat.

Does the law of Lambert and Beers have any bearing on the energy absorption of green house gasses such as CO2 or is atmospheric CO2 the only energy absorbing gas that is exempt from this law?!! According to chemists, 30ppm of CO2 is nearly as high as the energy absorption can become before the total energy absorbed will reach an asymptotic maxim against a horizontal line. …but then chemists are not climatologists!

I think that at the root of this debate over climate change (warming) is an insidious big government / socialist agenda to control how people live. Of course, we western nations are evil oppressors who are using up all of the worlds resources (sarcasm). We should all just start growing and wearing hemp, Birkenstocks, join the union, the democratic party, chill out and start installing our home windmills and solar panels. If we forget anything, we can just either use public mass transportation or just hop in our Prius or other electric car and buzz down to the local box store and pick up what we need. Lol. http://hogpredators.com Good website.

“If there is no greenhouse effect, please explain why the stratosphere has been cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming.”

If measured at a set height, this is exactly what you would expect. The warmer troposphere pushes the tropopause upward, and because the stratosphere gets warmer with distance above the tropopause, the set height point is now less distance above the tropopause, therefore cooler.

Interesting dialogues here. It would appear that global warming/cooling/climate change is, at the very least, NOT settled science, as our esteemed and science-uneducated POTUS said publicly. Geologically, which is the proof of the pudding, it would be surprising if climate was not changing. But the change does not portend the end of the species, as Al Gore and a host of other “Chicken Little” followers would have us believe. The climate system is so incredibly complex that one researcher can demonstrate a computer model which forecasts the end, while another model finds entirely the opposite. The facts are in the geological record; yes climate changes, no it doesn’t result in catastrophe for all. Our little event, if it is real, is not a game-changer, merely a minor change. I look forward to more discussions as I update my learning on this subject with your comments.

Economics works on supply and demand, so if you restrict supply and keep the same demand the prices rise. So restricting all fossil fuel exploration and production will simply raise the prices of what they have and make it last a lot longer. Not to mention the subsidies to diversify into renewables and free carbon permits they sell for millions.

And more immediately, the regulatory assault on coal is providing a huge benefit to petroleum interests. The US switch from coal to natural gas for power generation is a big gift to “big oil”.

I like the suggestion upthread about keeping detailed rebuttals in a word document for easy cut and paste, but that takes time to build up.

(That was my suggestion.) Second best would be if WordPress did what some forum site software like Invision does and allow commenters to search for their own (and others?) past comments, for reposting.

Bob Mueller says:
November 21, 2012 at 6:52 pm
Does the law of Lambert and Beers have any bearing on the energy absorption of green house gasses such as CO2 or is atmospheric CO2 the only energy absorbing gas that is exempt from this law?!! According to chemists, 30ppm of CO2 is nearly as high as the energy absorption can become before the total energy absorbed will reach an asymptotic maxim against a horizontal line. …but then chemists are not climatologists!

Indeed, but physical chemists know better than that, they know about line broadening and that at the conditions that pertain in our atmosphere it’s an approximately logarithmic dependence, at sufficiently higher concentration it would be square-root.

KA says: November 22, 2012 at 8:20 am
Our little event, if it is real, is not a game-changer, merely a minor change. I look forward to more discussions as I update my learning on this subject…

Hi KA. Have you read Mark Lynas “Six Degrees”? It describes possible outcomes for a global average temperature rise of 1C, 2C, 3C etc in a well researched and easily digestible format. As for updating learning please consider cross-indexing claims made on various sites both supporting and skeptical of AGW/CAGW. The “little event” of which you speak may not be so benign should climate sensitivity be +3C (see Knutti and Hegerl 2008 http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf).

“The sweater inhibits that convection. Unless it has a specific IR reflecting layer, as in a mylar space blanket, I doubt significant thermal radiation is inhibited at all.”

Of course, mylar space blankets are used all the time in – you guessed it – space, to trap thermal radiation and balance temperatures on satellites. So, rather than something as mundane as a sweater, the argument works if one simply cites the nowadays commonplace application of these materials for just such a purpose.

Ken Gregory says:
November 21, 2012 at 11:42 am

“I also believe that the vast majority of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is due to human caused emissions.”

It’s almost all due to temperature. Any hypothesis has to explain the data, and those which claim human attribution require appeals to faith in the existence of exotic, implausible, and unobserved mechanisms in order to be compatible with the above linked temperature/CO2 relationship.

Bart – The graph you show looks very convincing, but I investigated it a while ago, and I’m sure that your interpretation is incorrect. The graph shows change in CO2 vs temperature, and there is a strong correlation. Strong enough to establish that there is a causal link. Temperature is clearly the driver not the driven, but it doesn’t mean that temperature drives all or most of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. It means that the oceans react quite quickly to temperature changes, absorbing more CO2 if temperature falls, less if temperature rises. So some of the “wiggles” on a CO2 graph are indeed caused by temperature. But the bulk of the CO2 increase over the last few decades is unescapably man-made.

I have applied Henry’s law to the oceans, subdivided into a number of regions, with various tweakable parameters, and no matter what I tweak the answer always comes out much the same: the oceans have been absorbing around half of man-made CO2 and continue to do so. Temperature changes affect the rate of absorption, but the bulk of the atmospheric CO2 increase over the last few decades is man-made.

Sorry I haven’t posted the calcs with this comment, but I would have to tidy them up a bit first, and I can’t now see much being done before the new year. Happy to go into them further if needed.

It seems that the confusion about CO2 increase following global warming is coming from unauthorized interpreters of the Vostok and Greenland ice cores…there should be a law enforced by East Anglia and NASA.

Come now! Only stuff written in Latin or Greek or Hebrew or etc.etc. was thought to be the Holy Word. And what scientific date does not contain some tweak inserted by the all too human scientist to make his/her case?

“But the bulk of the CO2 increase over the last few decades is unescapably man-made.”

That hypothesis requires an exotic process which seamlessly removes the low frequency portion of the temperature influence, which matches perfectly as it is, and replaces it with a precisely synchronized-in-phase anthropogenic component. That is epicyclic reasoning, and is not remotely plausible.

Bart – Well,no. That may be one way of doing it, but it is a big leap to say it’s the only way. If you (or others) think it’s worthwhile, I’ll try to get the calcs tidied up, add proper explanations, and get it posted here. Unfortunately, as things look right now, it’s not going to happen before January. Not brilliantly satisfactory, but the best I can offer.

Well, no Mike. It isn’t a leap at all. It’s right here. The curvature of the accumulated CO2 matches nearly perfectly that induced by the slope of the temperature graph, after scaling it to match the “wiggles.” Since significant human effects would add additional curvature, for which there is little room left, they are necessarily insignificant. To a high degree of accuracy, all one needs to estimate CO2 levels is the starting point, and temperatures since. Human inputs are largely superfluous.

Your only out is to hypothesize a distortionless high pass filtering process acting on the temperature sensitivity. There is no such thing as a distortionless analog filter – that’s why the world went digital. A high order Bessel-type transfer function might do the job, but the notion of such a process arising naturally is really grasping at very insubstantial straws. William of Ockham would have very cross words with you. The temperature-CO2 relationship exists seamlessly across the entire frequency range. There is no plausible alternative. There just isn’t.

There doesn’t appear to be anywhere else of any significance for atmospheric CO2 to come from or go to, except the oceans. So the oceans must have been absorbing CO2 over the last 26 years at least.

Temperature:

Temperature clearly affects CO2, as you have noted.
In this graph the Y axis is ppm p.a. change in atmospheric CO2. Temperature (I think Hadcrut3) is scaled to match.

You assert that the atmospheric CO2 is “almost all due to temperature“. So the question now is: If mankind was not putting all that CO2 into the atmosphere, would atmospheric CO2 still have gone up by a similar amount?

If “yes”, then absent man-made CO2 the oceans would be pumping out lots of CO2, implying that they are ‘striving’ for a balance in which atmospheric CO2 would be higher than it is now. But the reality is that the oceans have been net absorbers of CO2, as per the above numbers, and therefore the oceans are actually ‘striving’ for a balance in which the atmospheric CO2 is lower than it is now.

It is pretty obvious that the answer to the question is “no”, so it wasn’t really necessary to do any detailed calcs on it. But I did, and they indicate that only something like 6-12% of the CO2 increase since 1980 is due to rising temperatures. ie, absent man-made CO2, the atmospheric CO2 would have gone up only 6-12% as much as it actually did.

This is Ferdinand Englebeen’s “mass balance” fallacy. You have no idea if the oceans have been collectively absorber or emitter. The numbers you consider are circular – the estimates are based on the very conclusion you seek to draw from them. What has been done is that an underdetermined set of equations have been solved for an artificially restricted set of variables, but there is no actual unique solution for the full set of variables.

No handwaving or data manipulation you care to perform negates the fundamental inconsistency of the temperature-CO2 relationship with your conclusion. No matter how much evidence you amass in favor of your proposition, a single contradiction is all that is needed to disprove it. And, that contradiction is here.

Bart;
The consequence of your observations is that the human contribution is simply irrelevant in view of the volume of dissolved and buffered CO2 in the oceans. The atmosphere’s level is “set” by the temperature of the ocean, regardless of what we do. If all human emissions ceased tomorrow, the atmosphere’s content would not budge (noticeably).

I guess the actual effects being observed such as later and shorter bird migrations, insect populations moving north and the loss of the arctic polar ice cap are not really happening because we don’t understand the exact cause(s). The world as we know it sure seems to be ending and we are having lively discussions on where to place the deck chairs of the Titanic.

“I guess the actual effects being observed such as later and shorter bird migrations, insect populations moving north and the loss of the arctic polar ice cap are not really happening because we don’t understand the exact cause(s).”

None of the effects you mention can be empirically proven to be detrimental to either the affected animal or human civilization.

Oh an on the insects moving north, from most of what I have read they aren’t moving north, they are expanding their habitat to the north. These insects still live in their “traditional” ranges. They now cover a larger range and that is good for them biologically.

“The world as we know it sure seems to be ending”

The world as we know it is always ending and always will be. The world is a dynamic system and it constantly changes. Tomorrow will be different than today. The world changes, get over it.

“and we are having lively discussions on where to place the deck chairs of the Titanic.”

No, we are having a calm discussion on where to place the deck chairs on Allure of The Seas on a bright calm day in the middle of the Caribbean sea and some lunatic is yelling “Iceberg!” at the top of his lungs.

This is Ferdinand Englebeen’s “mass balance” fallacy. You have no idea if the oceans have been collectively absorber or emitter. The numbers you consider are circular – the estimates are based on the very conclusion you seek to draw from them. What has been done is that an underdetermined set of equations have been solved for an artificially restricted set of variables, but there is no actual unique solution for the full set of variables.

Nothing wrong with the mass balance equations, what is wrong is the mumbo-jumbo you keep trotting out in your vain attempts to rebut it, relying on non-physical phenomena at variance with the observations. The oceans are observed to be an absorber, and in any case the Henry’s law coefficients are such that a much larger rise in temperature would be necessary to emit the quantity of CO2 which is accumulating in the atmosphere.
The reason your wiggle matching of T and CO2 works is because the absorption by the oceans is an inverse function of T.
d[CO2]/dt= Source + Fanthro – Sink( [CO2],1/T)

The observed d[CO2]/dt is approximately equal to Fanthro/2 so Source-Sink is also approximately Fanthro/2 but modulated by the 1/T contribution to the Sink. Therefore if T increases the sink decreases and [CO2] increases and vice versa, hence the correlation.

Bart says “The numbers you consider are circular – the estimates are based on the very conclusion you seek to draw from them.“.

I gave my sources, the main ones being the EIA for fossil fuel CO2 emissions and Scripps for atmospheric CO2 concentration. There is absolutely no way that any of the soources could be in any way whatsoever based on the conclusion that I drew from them. And I object to the inference in your “the very conclusion you seek to draw“. I analysed the data to try to find out, in as unbiased a manner as I could, whether the bulk of the atmospheric CO2 increase could have been natural. I found that it quite simply could not be. Phil has added a good explanation.